Supreme Court pulls up Srinivasan for attending working committee

Chennai: After rejecting BCCI’s several options including the suggestion to hand over the issue to the Board’s Behaviour Committee comprising Ravi Shastri, Amitabh Choudhary and Sanjay Patel, the Supreme Court hinted at setting up a high-powered committee consisting of retired judges to suggest measures to cleanse the game and ascertain if there was conflict of interest involving Srinivasan.

“That committee has to be a high-powered committee and that committee will also look into the conflict of interest and its findings will be binding on BCCI,” a bench of justices TS Thakur and FMI Kalifulla observed.“Conflict of interest issue can be a course correction for future. If committee says there was a conflict of interest in Srinivasan's function, it cannot say punish but suggest for amendments in the rule,” it said.

While senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for Srinivasan, assured that Srinavasan would keep away from the day-to-day administration of the game on being elected after the upcoming election, the counsel for Cricket Association of Bihar Nalini Chidambraram submitted he should not be allowed to contest at all.However, the bench said since Justice Mudgal Committee has not found anything against Srinivasan it wondered if it would proper to keep him away from contesting election.

“In this background, is Srinivasan not eligible to contest election? On what juristic principle can we stop him at this stage?” the bench observed adding that addressing the issue of election at this stage would mean that there is an issue of disqualifying him from contesting polls. The Court also pulled up Srinivasan for attending two working committee meetings as chief of the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association.

The court told Srinivasan that he was supposed to stay away but instead he found a different route to stay involved in the BCCI. “You stepped aside but came through the back door. We can understand your passion for the game but not so much passion. You attended the working committee meeting as recently as three weeks ago. If you keep attending meetings then how will you stay away from the Board?” the court observed.