New Delhi: In some scathing reprimand for the the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) over allocation of funds to state cricket bodies, the Supreme Court today said that the cricket governing body was distributing finds like a 'mutually beneficial society' without any rationale.
“Funds distributed like a 'mutually beneficial society' without any rationale,” the SC said, while observing that Gujarat has revived Rs. 66 crore in the last three years as finds from the BCCI while 11 states received nothing.
The BCCI had earlier come under severe criticism of the top court over its unbalanced distribution of funds and had asked the body to submit a detailed report of funds it had disbursed state-wise.
“BCCI must have distributive justice, why are eleven states penniless? Why should these states go begging?” the court said.
The observations came while the court was hearing recommendations made by the Justice R M Lodha panel in wake of the spot-fixing and betting scandal in IPL.
The Lodha panel, set up by the apex to court on January 2015 to suggest structural reforms in the cricket body in wake of the IPL scandal. The committee comprised of three members including Justice Lodha and retired Supreme Court judges Ashok Bhan and R Raveendran.
The court further reprimanded the cricket governing body over its opaque structure and arbitrary manner of functioning. “You don’t even keep an account of the money which is allocated to various state associations,” the SC bench told BCCI.
"Have you monitored these funds as how it is being utilized. There is no credible monitoring mechanism to look at whether even infrastructre has been created or not," a bench headed by Chief Justice of India TS Thakur had earlier said.
The Lodha panel in its report had suggested that the BCCI should come under the ambit of the Right to Information Act (RTI) so that every citizen in the country has access to information held by the cricket board.
