New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday ended the embargo on Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) member of Parliament and former Union minister Anurag Singh Thakur to associate with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), ending the nine-year old hiatus that kept him away from BCCI for not implementing Justice Lodha Committee reforms in the cricketing body.
A bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant and justice Joymalya Bagchi said, “We modify para 25(ii) of our order dated January 2, 2017 to the extent that the applicant shall be free to participate in the affairs of the BCCI as per Rules and Regulations.
Thakur had moved his application in 2018 seeking recall of the directions passed against him by the top court. The ire of the court was directed against the conduct of BCCI office bearers and its state affiliates for failing to comply with the norms set out by a committee headed by former CJI RM Lodha. Thakur was the then BCCI President and had to step down following this order.
The 2017 order said, “Shri Anurag Thakur President of BCCI shall forthwith cease and desist from being associated with the working of BCCI.”
Senior advocate PS Patwalia who appeared for Thakur told the court that the court never intended to ban his client for life and in any event, several other directions in the same order of January 2017 to initiate contempt proceedings against him came to be dropped on tendering an unconditional apology.
In his application, Thakur said, “The order has visited the applicant with adverse civil consequences without hearing the applicant…These remarks have caused immense mental anguish and public embarrassment and have also been a matter of public discussion and debate which has affected the public image of the applicant adversely.”
The bench said, “We find it a fit case to apply the doctrine of proportionality to hold that neither this court intended to impose a life ban nor such a serious embargo was contemplated in the facts and circumstances of the case.”
Senior advocates Maninder Singh and Sridhar Potaraju jointly assisting the court as amicus curiae had also recommended to the court that in July 2017 Thakur’s apology was accepted by the court and contempt proceeding against him was dropped. In this light, they urged the court to favourably consider the recall plea.
The committee of administrators appointed by the court to implement the reforms was represented by senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan who objected to Thakur’s claim that he was not heard by the court before passing of the order. He told the court that the Lodha Committee reforms were made binding on BCCI and state associations by a judgment passed in July 2016.
Referring to orders passed in 2016, Sankaranarayanan said, “He deliberately solicited an opinion from the then International Cricket Council (ICC) Chairman Shashank Manohar to show that one of the reforms ordered by the court was wrong. Day after day the intransigence continued and it was then this court had said that enough is enough.”
The court remarked, “We agree with you that he was heard. But the question to be considered is can this direction continue for infinity.”
To this, Sankaranarayanan said that he does not oppose the application but only attempted to show the background in which the order came to be passed.
The top court has been monitoring the Lodha Committee reforms which brought a radical shift in the functioning of BCCI, a society registered under the Tamil Nadu Societies Registration Act. These reforms introduced a cooling-off period after two successive terms for office bearers in BCCI or state cricket bodies, and prescribed an age cap of 70 years among other changes.
