The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed the amendments in BCCI’s mandatory cooling off period between tenures of office bearers. This means president Sourav Ganguly and secretary Jay Shah can retain their respective positions in the board.
After the judgement, the office bearers will now undergo a cooling-off period only after two consecutive terms. This will be applicable to all the state associations affiliated to the board.
A bench of Justices DY Chandrachud and Hima Kohli mandated that administrators can have continuous tenure of 12 years which includes six years in State Association and six years in BCCI before the cooling-off period of three years comes into effect.
Ganguly became the BCCI president of the BCCI in October 2019 and according to the previous rule, his term should have ended by now. That’s because before his appointment to the BCCI, the former Indian captain had served as president of the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) between 2014 and 2019.
Similarly, Shah became an office-bearer of the Gujarat Cricket Association in 2013 before being appointed as the BCCI secretary six in 2019.
Their tenure was under ‘extension’ because the apex court had not heard the plea for amendment of the rules or given any orders regarding their removal from office till now.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday had stated that the BCCI is an autonomous body and the court “cannot micro-manage its functioning”. It also asked the BCCI why it wants to have people above 70 years to represent the nation in the ICC.
The top court had also proclaimed that the cooling-off period would not be scrapped between the tenures of office bearers as the objective of the cooling off period is that there should be no vested interest.
Earlier, the Justice R M Lodha-led committee had recommended reforms in India’s cricketing body which were accepted by the apex court.