The Board of Control for Cricket in India’s legal expenses went over a whopping Rs 100 crore in last three years, but still failed to bring out desired results for the cricket body.
The failure is evident as the apex court reacted strongly to the flipflops of the BCCI and sacked its top brass including president Anurag Thakur and secretary Ajay Shirke.
The BCCI’s legal bill to fight the 2013 Indian Premier League (IPL) spot-fixing and betting scandal adds up to more than Rs 100 crore, Hindustan Times reported quoting its sources.
The expenses are pegged around Rs 9 lakh per day while fighting cases at different levels, the report says.
The amount includes the appearance fee of legal eagles like Aryama Sundaram, Kapil Sibal, Mukul Rohatgi, Shekhar Naphade and Arvind Datar, and the expenses of the two investigative and advisory bodies, Justice Mukul Mudgal and Justice RM Lodha Committees, appointed by the Supreme Court.
According to the report, lawyer Shekhar Naphade who represented BCCI in the Supreme Court against the Bihar Cricket Association last year, received Rs 1.3 crore in just two months last year for appearing in the apex court.
“Till 2015, the BCCI spent about Rs 57 crore on the IPL fixing-related cases,” a senior BCCI official told the daily.
"I can assess that it has crossed more than Rs100 crore, but see what we got it in return,” he added, referring to the sacking of Anurag Thakur and Ajay Shirke by the Supreme Court on Monday.
BCCI sources also claimed that the expenses of the Lodha Committee stood at Rs 3.5 crore, which is even more baffling.
While appointing it in January 2015, the Supreme Court had allowed the Committee to fix its fee and incidental expenses such as travel, hotel, transport and secretarial services, which were deemed necessary to conduct proceedings.
