New Delhi, April 23: Former Indian cricket board president A.C. Muthiah has moved the Supreme Court seeking to restrain board office-bearers from having any commercial interests in the Indian Premier League.
Muthiah has specifically objected to Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) secretary N. Srinivasan holding a stake in the Chennai Super Kings franchise by virtue of being vice-chairman and managing director of India Cements Limited, which won the bid in 2008.
The former board chief had earlier moved Madras High Court on the issue, but first a single-judge bench and later a division bench rejected his plea.
Muthiah claimed in his apex court petition that Srinivasan had benefited commercially from a BCCI event, thereby violating the board’s rules. A BCCI regulation says “no administrator shall have, directly or indirectly, any commercial interest in any of the events of (the) BCCI”.
A board office-bearer was by definition an administrator, Muthiah claimed. He pointed out that the IPL was run by a BCCI sub-committee.
“The IPL is not a separate entity but forms part of (the) BCCI and is managed by a separate governing council in which the BCCI office-bearers are ex-officio members,” he stated. Srinivasan is a member of the IPL governing council.
Muthiah said that as a past board president, he had complained to the then BCCI president on September 5 and September 15, 2008, and sought Srinivasan’s disqualification as an administrator after India Cements won the Chennai bid. The BCCI did not respond, he said, forcing him to move Madras High Court.
Within days of the suit being filed, the board held its annual general meeting (on September 27, 2008) and amended the rules to exclude the IPL in particular and Twenty20 in general from the ambit of the regulation, Muthiah said.
He claimed this exercise of power was mala fide as it was not intended to promote cricket but to promote the interests of Srinivasan.
A single-judge bench dismissed his plea on the ground that the BCCI was like a private club and no outsider could question its regulations nor courts interfere in its management.
