The Board of Control for Cricket is heading for another legal battle with a rising internal faction as the latter has threatened to move to court if the Tamil Nadu strongman N. Srininvasan attended and reclaimed the position as the body’s president at Friday’s working committee meeting here.
“I think this is going to be a contempt (of court) if Srinivasan tries to take the chair (at the working committee meeting). Today we are warning, cautioning, appealing to all who those are concerned, they should throw out Mr. Srinivasan. If not, then the legal course of the action will be taken,” Congress MP and Cricket Association of Jharkhand president Subodh Kant Sahay said here on Thursday.
Sahay questioned Srinivasan’s stature to continue as an important board functionary when his name was being taken in the same breath as underworld don Dawood Ibrahim.
Sahay has joined hands with Cricket Association of Bihar secretary Aditya Verma, on whose public interest litigation the Mumbai high court termed the formation of the two-member probe panel into the spot-fixing and betting row as illegal.
However, despite the order, it will not be legally binding on the sidelined Indian Cements owner to not attend the meeting and come back as BCCI president, according to Verma’s lawyer Awanish Sinha.
“Morally, he (Srinivasan) should not attend the meeting. In fact, it is illegal also. If the probe panel was formed with a malafide intention of getting a clean chit, then what else does he wants,” the lawyer said, but declined to term the order legally binding.
On its part, the group has filed a caveat in the Supreme Court to prevent Srinivasan from attending the meeting. But knowing the Indian board’s disregard for any authority, their future plan of action is already in place.
“We will move a criminal petition if he attends the meeting. We have filed a caveat in the
Supreme Court. But they don’t even agree to the law. Let him go to meeting, let him break the law and we will file a case,” said Verma.
Verma, a former Bihar Ranji player, had claimed that he was coaxed and threatened to withdraw the matter by a well-known BCCI official which he declined to name.
“On one of my visits to Mumbai, I was told by a BCCI official that if your state board was to be given recognition, it will be given by us. So what will you achieve by doing all this? Let’s sit, talk and find a way out. There was an offer of a settlement. He also said that your son is playing, why do you want to ruin his career,” revealed Verma.
Bihar was originally a member of the BCCI but following the bifurcation in 2000, the state board has been fighting a separate battle in the court for recognition by the BCCI.