BCCI calls off committee meet; to move Supreme Court

Board of Control for Cricket in India's president-in-exile N Srinivasan will have to wait a while before he is back at the helm again.

Fearing more legal complications, the BCCI called off its Working Committee Meeting in New Delhi on Friday and maintained that interim chief Jagmohan Dalmiya will continue to serve in his position.

The meeting was cancelled after a series of discussions among the top brass and amid fears of a revolt against Srinivasan if he tried to make a comeback under the circumstances.

It is also learnt that two vice-presidents and other top officials threatened to resign if Srinivasan chaired the meeting.

The BCCI will appeal in the Supreme Court against the Bombay high court order, which had declared the Board's IPL spot-fixing and betting probe "illegal and unconstitutional" on Wednesday.

Before the working committee meeting was called off, the IPL's Governing Council decided to reconstitute its ethics commission, where two positions were lying vacant following resignations of Ajay Shirke (treasurer) and Sanjay Jagdale (honorary secretary).

"At its meeting in Delhi earlier today, the IPL Governing Council (Mr. N. Srinivasan having recused himself) considered at length, the issues arising from the Bombay High Court's order regarding the constitution of the probe commission, which was formed to investigate the complaints made by the BCCI against India Cements Limited, Jaipur IPL Cricket Private Limited, Mr. Gurunath Meiyappan and Mr Raj Kundra,” a statement from BCCI secretary Sanjay Patel read.

"As a matter of principle, the members confirmed that it was important that the Governing Council's actions be and be seen to be both legally and ethically correct.

"The Governing Council believes that the probe commission was properly constituted in accordance with the IPL Operational Rules, and has consequently decided that an appeal should be filed in the Honourable Supreme Court," he added.

Srinivasan recused himself from the meeting while this decision was taken but returned after that.

BCCI sources said that it took intense persuasion from vice-president and legal luminary Arun Jaitley, Dalmiya and IPL chairman Rajeev Shukla for Srinivasan to back down from his adamant stand.

Srinivasan was told that his return as president could lead to a wave of Public Interest Litigations across the country and create more embarrassment for the BCCI.

He was apparently unhappy with this possibility but after consultation with his legal team decided that it would be better to call off the meeting.

The other "major technical flaw" with this meeting was not having the word ‘emergency’ mentioned when the working committee members were summoned.

"The meeting itself is technically invalid as one needed to mention the word emergency if one calls for a working committee meeting 72 hours within the last meeting," said a BCCI official.

There's no official word from the BCCI about the day's developments.

Photograph: Harish Kotian/Rediff.com