The Supreme Court-appointed Justice RM Lodha committee on Monday asked banks where the Board of Control for Cricket in India holds accounts to stop disbursing funds for financial decisions made by the body, PTI reported. In a letter to the banks, the panel noted that the BCCI, in its Special General Meeting in Mumbai on October 1, had made decisions to “disburse large funds” to various member associations.
The committee said that as per its directive, the board was not supposed to make any decision on issues apart from “routine matters”. “The disbursement of these amounts are not routine,” said the letter, which was also addressed senior BCCI officials. The committee also accused the cricketing body of breaching Supreme Court judgments as well as “the first set of timelines” to implement the reforms laid down by the Lodha panel, which included a “Fund Disbursement Policy”.
Meanwhile, BCCI President Anurag Thakur said the cricketing body will lose several crores if it implements the Justice Lodha committee’s recommendations on the Indian Premier League. Thakur said it was not possible to keep a 15-day-long gap between the IPL and the national cricket calendar. “If you wind up the IPL because of international calendars, Indian cricket is going to lose,” he said.
The panel’s letter came just two days after the BCCI agreed to implement a few of the recommendations proposed by the Supreme Court-appointed committee. It agreed to form an apex council but with certain modifications. It also agreed to include a representative of the Comptroller and Auditor General as a member of its council as well as in the IPL governing council. The Lodha committee was formed after the spot-fixing and betting scandal emerged during the 2013 leg of the IPL.
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