New Delhi: Delhi woke up to gloomy weather on Thursday but there is widespread hope that some of the dark clouds hovering over Indian cricket will be cleared with great effect later in the day when a two-member bench of the Supreme Court comprising Justice TS Thakur and Justice FM Khalifullah delivers its order in the high-profile case.
It's a big day for BCCI president in abeyance N Srinivasan. © TNN
A number of individuals, including Board of Control for Cricket in India president in abeyance N Srinivasan and Indian Premier League chief operating officer Sundar Raman, will be among those whose fates will be decided by the order. IPL teams like Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals will also be impacted by the order on Thursday.
Srinivasan has been BCCI president in abeyance for close to 10 months now after having 'voluntarily' stepped aside when the Supreme Court empowered the Justice Mukul Mudgal Committee with investigative powers to probe allegations against 13 individuals whose names it had submitted to the Bench in its first report.
Srinivasan made a couple of attempts to impress on the Court to let him resume office, especially after the Mudgal Committee revealed that Srinivasan had not indulged himself in betting. However, the Supreme Court did not accede to his requests, coming down heavily on the possibility of his conflict of interest.
If the Court endorses the Mudgal Committee finding that Gurunath Meiyappan and Raj Kundra were not only team officials of Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals respectively but had also placed illegal bets on their teams, the BCCI and the IPL could be under pressure to enforce the rules for teams, leading to their being expelled from the league.
The Supreme Court had indicated on December 16 that it could scrap any rule of the Board which was not in public interest. Ahead of the inaugural IPL in 2008, the BCCI amended its rule 6.2.4 to permit Board officials to own IPL teams. The Court had observed that this was "at the heart of conflict of interest" as it enabled Srinivasan to wear two hats.
The Court also said that it was of the view that exit of a team would not disturb the format of the IPL or any other cricket event in the country. "There are other teams. You can create more teams," the Court observed.
"The purity of the game is paramount and we will do anything including striking down rule 6.2.4 of the BCCI's constitution which allowed administrators to own teams to keep cricket clean. We are in public interest jurisdiction and our scope becomes wide and sweeping. Your rule may be sacrosanct for you but not for us. The BCCI needs to take it out of their minds that we can't adjudicate on BCCI rules and that we are powerless," Justice TS Thakur told BCCI lawyer Aryama Sundaram.
Raman, who admitted to the Mudgal Committee that he received information about Meiyappan and Kundra's betting activities but did not convey that to anyone in the BCCI because he had been told that the information was not actionable, is another administrator besides Srinivasan waiting for the Supreme Court order.
The Court had slammed Raman for 'watching the fun'. "It seems because of your job profile you were only interested in serving VVIPS. You didn't deem it fit to register a complaint because you were taking care of celebrities. You were only watching the fun," the Court observed on December 16 last.
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