India Cements employees should not be allowed to function in BCCI, says Supreme Court

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday came down heavily on India Cements and said that no one from the company, which is owned by the BCCI president and owner of IPL team Chennai Super Kings N Srinivasan, should be involved with the functioning of the board.

No one associated with India Cements be associated with the BCCI’s functioning for now, Justice Patnaik said, accepting lawyer Harish Salve’s arguments on the widespread conflict of interest that existed in the BCCI.

Salve also referred to the issue of conflict of interest issue which “runs deep” in cricket.

“The captain of the Indian cricket team is the vice president of India Cements. The internal auditor of BCCI is an employee of India Cements. The financial officer of BCCI is an employee of Indian Cements,” he pointed out.

He said the “captain was guilty of corrupt conduct” referring to Dhoni’s statement before the panel that Meiyappan had nothing to do with CSK affairs and that he was a cricket fan. He demanded that players and franchisees be treated on par as also players and administrators in they had committed any infraction of the BCCI’s anti-corruption rules.

The rules are very broad and cover any instance of revealing any information which could be reasonably used in betting, he said. The player is suspended, but the BCCI wants the franchisee, CSK, to be let off with a rap.

Meiyappan’s betting was not done with the consent or knowledge of Indian Cements and CSK, the BCCI has claimed, Salve said.

A similar charge was made by former IPL commissioner Lalit Modi in an interview to ET a few weeks ago. “In our inputs to the Justice Mudgal committee, we had highlighted how key personnel employed with the BCCI/IPL are also employed with India Cements and showed as to how Mr Srinivasan and India Cements had an all-pervasive control on the BCCI/IPL.”

Modi alleged that Srinivasan has held all the cards close to his chest and anyone that has been a supporter of his has been granted favour within the BCCI.

He alleged that a key official and an umpire of IPL along with a few players of CSK, including Dhoni, were employees of India Cements. He also said that the BCCI lawyer Aryama Sundaramis also the lawyer for India Cements.