The Supreme Court Wednesday accepted BCCI’s plea seeking to do away with the mandatory cooling-off period between tenures of office bearers across state cricket associations and the BCCI, paving the way for cricket association president Saurav Ganguly and secretary Jay Shah to continue in office.
Now the administrators will have to undergo the cooling-off period only after two consecutive terms in office.
The new rule will also apply to state cricket associations now.
Hearing a plea of BCCI seeking to amend its constitution, the Supreme Court had on Tuesday observed that the BCCI is an autonomous body and that the court cannot micro-manage its functioning. It also asked the apex cricket body of the country why it wants to have people above 70 years to represent the nation in the ICC.
The top court had also said that the cooling-off period will not be scrapped between the tenures of office bearers as “the purpose of the cooling off period is that there should be no vested interest.”
As per the constitution adopted by the BCCI, an office bearer has to undergo a three-year cooling-off period between two consecutive terms in either the state association or the BCCI or both combined. At the outset, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for BCCI, told a bench of Justices DY Chandrachud and Hima Kohli, that the game of cricket is substantially streamlined in the country. He submitted that the apex court has said that when the bye-laws will go into functional preparedness, some changes could be made with the leave of the court.
Ganguly took charge of the BCCI as its chief in October 2019. Going by the existing constitution, Ganguly’s six-year term as an office-bearer ended in 2020.
Shah became an office-bearer of the Gujarat Cricket Association in 2013 before moving to the BCCI as its secretary six years later.
