CEO of the Board of Control for Cricket in India Rahul Johri will oversee the appointment and tenure of all officials of the body, ANI reported on Monday. This comes a day after the Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators closed the offices of former BCCI president Anurag Thakur and secretary Ajay Shirke. Officials associated with the two offices were also sacked.
Moreover, the Indian cricket team’s media manager Nishant Arora also resigned on Sunday night. Arora was believed to be Thakur’s close aide. Senior members of the Indian cricket team had alleged that Arora had been passing on details of dressing room conversations to Thakur even after the former BCCI chief was ousted from the board, according to a DNA report.
The Supreme Court had sacked Thakur and Shirke from their posts on January 2. Thakur faced perjury charges after amicus curiae Gopal Subramaniam had accused him of lying under oath when he denied seeking a letter from the International Cricket Council.
On January 30, the court appointed former Comptroller and Auditor General of India Vinod Rai the head of a four-member panel to run the BCCI. The panel includes former women’s team captain Diana Edulji, historian Ramachandra Guha and managing director of IDFC Limited Vikram Limaye.
Thakur and Shirke were removed from their BCCI positions for failing to implement the recommendations of the Supreme Court-appointed Justice Lodha committee. It was formed after the spot-fixing and betting scandal emerged during the 2013 leg of the Indian Premier League. Among the recommendations were not appointing ministers and other government employees to the cricketing board, but Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi had argued that bringing in the proposed reforms required a larger debate and must be referred to a bigger bench.
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