Amitabh Choudhary accuses CoA of subverting court orders

Choudhary has alleged that the CoA has shown “complete disregard” to the court order since its “very first act”, after assuming charge on January 31, last year. On January 30, 2017, the Supreme Court had nominated Choudhary, BCCI treasurer Anirudh Chaudhry and then CoA member Vikram Limaye to represent the Indian cricket board in an ICC meeting. Choudhary today wrote: “… the very first act of the Committee of Administrators who assumed charge on 31.01.2017 was to show complete disregard to the above order within 24 hours of its pronouncement. In complete violation of the said order the Committee of Administrators, acting through the CEO of BCCI, communicated with the ICC via e-mail on 31.01.2017…”

The acting secretary quoted from the BCCI CEO Rahul Johri’s mail to his ICC counterpart, David Richardson, which said: “Mr. Vikram Limaye has been nominated by the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India to attend the ICC Board meetings on behalf of the BCCI”, requesting the body to allow an “additional person” from the BCCI to be present in the meeting as “the Observer” and assistant to Limaye. “As my humble mind understands, the orders dated 02.01.2017 and 30.01.2017 had two parts: a) Expeditious implementation of the Hon’ble Supreme Court judgment of July 18, 2016, and, b) supervision of management and administration of the BCCI. The spirit of the orders clearly is that the latter role had been assigned to facilitate the execution of the primary role of implementation of reforms,” Choudhary said, adding: “However, despite my best efforts I have still not been able to find in these orders, the two cardinal aspects that the CoA has been giving effect to since your very first day in office, namely, that i) No office bearers exist ii) CoA will supplant and replace the office bearers and assume their powers and functions.”