Financial Express: New Delhi: Wednesday, June 27, 2018.
Mired in
corruption related controversies for decades, the Delhi & Districts Cricket
Association (DDCA) today made a giant stride towards transparency by becoming
the first BCCI affiliated unit to come under the Right To Information (RTI)
Act. The five member RTI cell of DDCA will be headed by Public Information
Officer (PIO) Pradeep Kumar Banerjee. There will be two appellate authorities
the CEO, who is expected to be appointed after the elections and president of
the executive committee.
An Ethics
Officer and an Ombudsman will also be a part of the committee.
A fee of Rs
10 will be charged per RTI appeal. A maximum of two appeals in a particular
case will be entertained pdf forms of which have already been uploaded by the
DDCA along with the separate application form. While the Lodha Committee
recommendations wanted BCCI under RTI act, the game’s governing body has
vehemently resisted the move with their contention being that they don’t take
any government grant and don’t want to be labelled as National Sports
Federation (NSF).
However DDCA,
which is going into the elections tomorrow, has set the benchmark under High
Court appointed administrator Justice (Retd) Vikramajit Sen. It is learnt that
since DDCA is a company, it was necessary to bring it under RTI. “Recently, the
Law Commission of India has recommended that BCCI should be subject to the
Right to Information Act since all other National and State sports federations
are amenable to the Right to Information Act. In keeping with this
recommendation of the Law Commission of India and various judicial dicta, this
State Association should be transparent and accessible to the public,” a DDCA
press release stated.
“The DDCA is
a company and is bound by the provisions of the Companies Act and as such has
to make accessible various important documents such as the Minutes book of the
Company, Balance sheets etc. The Lodha reforms and judgements of the Hon’ble
Supreme Court and High Court of Delhi have sought to make cricket bodies like
the DDCA accountable and RTI is step towards that objective,” the release
further stated.
Former India
cricketer and DDCA presidential candidate Madan Lal welcomed the move.
“Obviously,
there should be a lot of transparency with regards to financial documents. If I
win the elections, it will be easier for me to answer people’s queries. RTI is
a step in the right direction and would help DDCA in gaining more credibility
in terms of transparency,” Lal told PTI today.