New Delhi: In a major development, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has moved to the Supreme Court of India seeking important amendment in the board constitution that would allow incumbent president Sourav Ganguly and secretary Jay Shah to get an extension of their terms to three years. The main objective of the move is to help Ganguly and Shah duck the three-year cooling-off period currently in force after the SC approved Lodha committee's recommendation last year.
The application is filed by treasurer Arun Dhumal. In that application, the BCCI said a few changes were approved at the Annual General Meeting on December 1 last year and it was seeking relaxation from the SC, as per its August 9, 2018 order, to implement the changes in the board's constitution.
The draft constitution, prepared by the Committee of Administrators and approved by the SC, had made three-year cooling period mandatory for incumbent cricket administrators who had served two terms in state cricket associations or BCCI.
Taking this clause into consideration, the terms of Ganguly and Shah are coming to end in July and June this year, respectively. Both were elected unopposed in October last year.
The BCCI AGM approved that the cooling-off period would only apply to the president and the secretary only if they had served two "consecutive terms at BCCI". This means their stints in state cricket associations will not be taken into account.
It must be noted that Ganguly was an office-bearer of the Cricket Association of Bengal, Shah had stints at the Gujarat Cricket Association before coming into the BCCI administrations.
