IPL spot-fixing: Did you purchase IPL team just for love of cricket? SC asks Srinivasan

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked BCCI to take action against Gurunath Meiyappan, son-in-law of BCCI's chief-in-exile, N Srinivasan. The apex court added that it won't bypass cricket board.

The Supreme Court has told BCCI to to provide options to solve the Meiyappan and Chennai Super Kings saga and given the Indian cricket board a deadline till 2 p.m. on Tuesday to come up with the options, according to reports.

It is learnt that the BCCI has offered four options to the top court:

• Srinivasan would step aside and disciplinary committee can decide punishment to Gurunath Meiyappana and CSK.
• The governing council of Indian Premier League (IPL) can decide what needs to be done.
• Two independent judges can be appointed.
• The Mudgal Committee can decide punishment to be handed over to CSK and N Srinivasan’s son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan

Read: Purity of cricket should be maintained, says SC to BCCI

The fact that N Srinivasan attending TNCA meetings even after stepping aside as the cricket administrator did not go down well with the Supreme Court.

Srinivasan admitted the mistake; saying he should not have attended the meetings.

The Supreme Court has set aside the entire day to hear the case on Tuesday. The apex court is likely to pass an order/interim order at the end of proceedings on the morrow.

It remains to be seen whether Srinivasan comes out clean before the all important BCCI AGM scheduled for December 17 as the court has taken a jaundiced view of Srinivasan’s alleged conflict of interest.

On Monday when the hearing resumed after a week, the SC observed that it was difficult to accept Srinivasan’s plea that there was no conflict of interest arising out of owning IPL team Chennai Super Kings and heading the BCCI.

A bench headed by justice T.S. Thakur said that conflict of interest is equal to bias and even though actual bias may not be in the case but even likelihood of bias is important. It said purity of cricket has to be maintained and all persons at the helm of its affairs should be above suspicion.

Meanwhile, former BCCI president Inderjit Singh Bindra on Monday said Srinivasan stood disqualified right from the day his company India Cements bought CSK.

“To the best of my recollection, permission for team bid was sought by India Cements and not by Srini as treasurer. Board Constitution barred any commercial dealing by Board official SP [Sharad Pawar] had no authority to give any permission,” Bindra wrote on Twitter.

“I specifically objected in Goa meeting and asked him to recuse himself. That is when they conceived of anti dating the amendment. Amendment was surreptitiously included in the minutes of 2008 AGM circulated in 2009. There was no specific agenda for the amendment Srini stood disqualified from the day he purchased Chennai team. On this issue we had number of clashes in IPL meeting and consequent walkouts,” he went on to explain.

Bindra also spoke about other ‘conflicts of interests’ in Indian cricket. Purchase of CSK was the mother of all conflicts. In Goa meeting in 2008, I had proposed that anti-corruption should be handed over to ICC. Srini vehemently opposed-obvious conflict of interest,” Bindra said.

“Purchase of Flintoff by CSK. Despite clear cut decision to put all players in the pool for re-auction after three years, he had his way on retention of players. Sahara contract for Team India was for Rs 3 crores/match. After Sahara’s withdrawal Srini signed a contract with STAR with 30% reduction,” Bindra alleged.