IPL spot fixing: Govt says will bring law to keep sports clean

NEW DELHI: Law minister Kapil Sibal on Saturday said the government intended to bring a law that would deal with all sorts of dishonest practices in all sports, including cricket, and bring under its sweep foreign players, bookies, conduits, even ordinary spectators who try to change the course of a game or the result of a game.

He said a first “draft” of the law was being prepared, consequent to the AG’s advice that a standalone central law was preferable instead of amending the existing IPC provisions. The draft would be sent to the sports ministry, which would in turn “consult all stake-holders for their opinion”. The new law would, however, not cover those currently being probed for the IPL betting scam as criminal laws cannot be made applicable retrospectively.

“For the last 10 years, we have been grappling with the problem of dishonest practice not only in cricket but also in other sports, more so cricket and we have not figured out whether the Union government has the power to curb such malpractices which we have seen and which are being investigated,” the minister said, alluding indirectly to the recent IPL betting episode.

Sibal read out portions of the AG’s opinion which said “match and sport fixing were so abhorrent to the concept of sports” that they cannot come under any existing entries in the state list. The AG instead suggested a holistic law to deal with the advances of technology that have come into sport. “We cannot let down millions of fans for whom cricket is a passion, a religion,” Sibal said, adding that both IPL chairman Rajeev Shukla and leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley had concurred with this view.

“The Opposition is also on board,” Sibal said. The law will cover all advances in technology and will cover any gesture and contact which tries to influence the outcome of a game. “It will be all inclusive; it will cover corporates, criminals and bookies, foreign players and even viewers.”