Board of Control for Cricket in India (#BCCI) is the central governing body of cricket in India. It is a consortium of state cricket associations formed in 1982. It is a private body which has been accused of opacity of functioning and corruption.
BCCI introduced the #IPL in 2008 which no doubt helped players franchises brands and everyone involved earn fast cash and overnight success and sometimes a call up to the national team. However it also had its own set of controversies like spot fixing betting match fixing allegedly bringing the game into disrepute.
BACKGROUND:
The IPL 2013 saw betting and spot fixing scandals involving Rajasthan Royals & Chennai Super. This had led to setting up of Mukul Mudgal Committee headed by former High Court judge Mukul Mudgal, Additional Solicitor General of India L Nageswar Rao, Senior advocate and former umpire Nilay Dutta and Sourav Ganguly to conduct independent enquiry into the allegations of corruption against BCCI chief N Srinivasan's son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan, Indian Cements, and Rajasthan Royals team owner Jaipur IPS cricket private limited as well as with a larger mandate of investigating betting and spot fixing in IPL 2013 and involvement of players.
The #Lodha Panel was set up by the Indian Supreme Court in January 2015 to determine punishments for those named in the Mudgal Committee reports and to recommend reforms for Cricket in India.
The Committee comprised of 3 members :- RM Lodha(ex Chief Justice of India), Ashok Bhan and R Raveendran(both retired Supreme Court judges)
In July Lodha committee submitted its report and put a ban of 2 years on Chennai Super Kings & Rajasthan Royals. In Jan 2016 it submitted its report for reforms in BCCI.
MAJOR RECOMMENDATIONS:
1) Divide the governance into two parts: cricketing and non-cricketing.
2) BCCI should come under the RTI act.
3) Betting should be legalized, for the public (barring cricket players, officials and administrators).
4) Match-and spot-fixing to be made a criminal offence.
5) The players and BCCI officials should disclose their assets to the board so as to ensure they do not indulge in betting.
6) No BCCI office bearer should have more than two consecutive terms.
7) No BCCI office-bearer should be Minister or government servant.
8) No BCCI office-bearer to be above 70 years of age.
9) There should be separate governing bodies for the IPL and the BCCI and a 15-day gap between IPL season and national calendar.
10) One state, one vote policy. This means, even a large state with multiple representatives will have one vote (as a single state). States like Maharashtra and Gujarat were earlier having multiple representations and voting rights.
11) A 9-member apex council replace the 14-member BCCI working committee. Each of these office-bearers has a three-year term and can contest for a maximum three terms.
12) Setting up of a Players’ Association to safeguard the interests and give a voice to the cricketers.
13) Formation of a Women’s Cricket and Selection Committee to ensure equal attention.
CRITICAL OVERVIEW:
Legalizing betting might fetch taxes for government and huge amount of legal money for our GDP, but it is not hidden from anyone that betting is the major reason for prevalent match fixing in the game of cricket. Further, it may be suicidal attempt by government in providing legal status to unethical practices. It may enhance terrorism activities in India as betting is one of major source of finance for terrorism. The committee recommended commercial breaks only at time of drinks, lunch or tea rather than ad breaks between overs but this small ad break(say 15 seconds) between overs account for major chunk of revenue for BCCI. This revenue helps BCCI to run coaching and talent search program to find out best players from small villages and towns.
However #LodhaCommittee advocates for uniformity in constitution and functioning of BCCI and member associations but does not recommend for enacting a national law for uniform, transparent and accountable sports bodies in India. Further it may be difficult to get BCCI under scrutiny of RTI until a national law is enacted by the parliament. The committee says that ministers or government servant should be debarred from holding a post in national and state bodies but not debarred politicians or MP/MLA’s from being part of sport bodies.
However committee advocates for more representation of players in #BCCI and sports bodies but without cleaning political interference from sports, nothing fruitful can be attained.
All of above flaws have lower significance when compared to spirit of Lodha committee report which put emphasis on #reformingcricket by removing some necessary evils such as #poorgovernance, #matchfixing, etc. The report is a starting step in reforming the sports and if accepted then become a landmark for reforms in other sports.
Thank You.
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