Supreme Court agrees to hear Subramanian Swamy's plea for lifting ban on Chennai Super Kings

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court today agreed to hear a plea of BJP leader Subramanian Swamy challenging Justice Lodha Committee's order suspending the IPL franchisee, Chennai Super Kings ( CSK), for two years over the 2013 betting scam involving its top official Gurunath Meiyappan.

A bench comprising Chief Justice T S Thakur and Justice U U Lalit said that it will fix a date for hearing the plea of Swamy in which he has also sought a CBI probe into the petition filed before the apex court by Cricket Association of Bihar (CAB).

"A fraud has been committed on this court as the entire litigation initiated by CAB was funded by Lalit Modi," Swamy said, claiming that he agrees with almost 99 per cent of the finding of Lodha panel except the banning of CSK.

Swamy also alleged that his earlier plea was wrongly rejected by the Madras High Court on the issue.

The high court on January 20 had dismissed Swamy's PIL challenging the suspension of CSK and Rajasthan Royals, saying it was not maintainable.

Star-studded CSK, then led by M S Dhoni, and Rajasthan Royals were on July 14, last year suspended for two years from the Indian Premier League in a clean-up exercise following the 2013 betting scam involving their top officials Meiyappan and Raj Kundra.

Meiyappan, son-in-law of the then BCCI chief N Srinivasan and a former Team Principal of CSK, and Kundra, co-owner of Jaipur IPL that runs Rajasthan Royals (RR), were suspended for life from any match conducted by BCCI.

The punishments were handed down by a three-member panel headed by former CJI R M Lodha which was asked by the Supreme Court to decide the quantum of punishment after finding them guilty of betting.

The Madras High Cout had also dismissed a similar petition by the owner of CSK challenging Justice Lodha panel's order.