Free
Press Journal: National: Friday, 08 January 2016.
In the
obsessive fan following that the game of cricket has in India today, keen
cricket-followers can take heart from the fact that the Justice R.M. Lodha
Committee appointed by the Supreme Court to go into the functioning of the
Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and related matters has made
genuinely useful recommendations. There cannot be a happier prognosis than that
the game which is steeped in corruption and maladministration could be cleansed
of the muck around it if the Lodha Committee’s recommendations are translated
into reality.
Clearly, the
impregnable fortress that the BCCI has been stands close to being breached
after years of an appalling degree of lack of accountability.
Since Justice
Lodha, a former chief justice of the Supreme Court, is an apex court appointee,
his recommendations will, hopefully, by and large, override the opposition of
vested interests that have entrenched themselves in cricket as in many other
sports in the country.
“THERE
cannot be a happier prognosis than that the game which is steeped in corruption
and maladministration could be cleansed of the muck around it if the Lodha
Committee’s recommendations are translated into reality. Clearly, the
impregnable fortress that the BCCI has been stands close to being breached
after years of an appalling degree of lack of accountability.”
Once the
pride of India, hockey is a sport that has suffered grievously at the hands of
officialdom and is today a pale shadow of what it used to be.
Cricket too
has been plagued by rampant corruption and misuse of office and it would be a
big boon for the country and the millions of cricket-lovers if the Lodha
committee brings a degree of honesty and propriety in the management of the
popular sport.
The saving
grace is that Justice Lodha’s position and moral authority is so strong that
politicians like Sharad Pawar, Farooq Abdullah, Rajeev Shukla, Arun Jaitley,
Lalu Yadav and many others would find it extremely difficult to scuttle the
recommendation that he has made to remove the stranglehold of such
politically-powerful people on cricket administration. Many of them will,
predictably, try every stratagem to cling on to their perches. Indeed, there
would be a new breed of vested interests ready to step into their shoes, but
the Lodha committee has rendered the game of cricket a yeoman service by
striking at the roots of the present breed which has milked the game for its
own selfish ends.
There is no
mistaking the fact that the BCCI is flush with money but it is equally true
that the new president, Shashank Manohar, has an impeccable reputation for
integrity which contrasts sharply with the reputations of a whole host of his
predecessors. The time is indeed propitious for a change for the better and there
is no reason why the new recommendations would not usher in a cleaner BCCI at
least in the foreseeable future. In due course, new vested interests will
develop but if the system is strengthened with honest intent, this may not
necessarily happen.
The most
significant fallout of the report would be that people like Sharad Pawar,
Niranjan Shah, Farooq Abdullah, Kamal Kajaria, N Srinivasan and many others who
have been part of the Board for years will have to resign from their positions
forthwith. Most of them are past 70 and this is one recommendation which will
be welcomed across the board. There are others who have served in top positions
for more than two plus decades and they too will have to vacate their chairs.
By
recommending slashing BCCI’s number of vice-presidents from five to one, the
Lodha panel has tried to ensure that bestowing of this coveted position as a
form of patronage on those who would be expected to toe the line of the
office-bearers would no longer be possible.
The
committee’s recommendation to legalise betting in India has understandably had
a mixed response. Criticism particularly centres around spot or match fixing
which has so far often gone hand in hand with betting. That the Lodha panel has
not focussed its attention on these ills is a failing of the panel. It is
indeed debatable whether legalising betting would not be used to re-fuel an
element of corruption in the body politic of cricket.
The Committee
has, of course, proposed a completely new governing structure for BCCI in order
to create space for professional management and to prevent any one individual
from dominating the board as former president N Srinivasan did.
Srinivasan
had become so autocratic that it was only the judiciary that could have reined
him in and ejected him. One can only hope that democratic functioning in the
BCCI would not be jeopardised under the new dispensation and that there would
never be a return to the era of lax accountability.
In the
autocratic years of the BCCI there was a conscious attempt to thwart the
players from forming an association.
The BCCI’s
complete male domination has been a sore point with women cricketers and it is
heartening that the board will have women’s representation in future in
deference to the Lodha committee’s fiat.This should help women’s cricket to
blossom internationally.
The
recommendation to bring the BCCI under the ambit of RTI is also a welcome one
and is bound to be opposed by many of those who perceive erosion of their
authority and of their free run in the past.
It would
indeed be foolhardy to expect that the BCCI and other affected parties would
not be seething with anger under the covers. The BCCI in particular must be
preparing to challenge the Lodha committee’s recommendations in court by hiring
the best of lawyers.
It remains to
be seen how far the three-member committee headed by Justice Lodha is allowed
to go to clean up the accumulated mess of so many years. But there is cause for
satisfaction that the Lodha committee has taken the bull by the horns. It is
now up to the judiciary to ensure that accountability and transparency are not
given short shrift.
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