Kapil Dev & Co. cleared of conflict-of-interest charges

During the CoA meeting on Monday, Committee member Diana Edulji wasn’t in agreement. But Rai and the other CoA member, Lt. Gen. (Retd) Ravi Thodge, supported the appointment. “Diana Edulji didn’t file anything (to the ethics officer). But she had her own views about the conflict,” Rai said.

Kapil and Rangaswamy are directors at the newly-formed Indian Cricketers’ Association (ICA), an association for ex-cricketers funded by the BCCI. Gaekwad is part of the BCCI’s member affiliation committee. Also, Kapil’s company, Dev Musco, supplies floodlights to some Indian venues used for international cricket.

“There was no legal issue. The issue was whether there was any conflict of interest. We examined it and we found that there was no conflict of interest. Kapil Dev’s company is totally independent. That has nothing to do with the BCCI. With regards to the ICA, they were only in the working group to set it up. Now that it has been set up, we have converted them to directors so that they can register the association,” Rai explained.

He added: “See, the steering committee was constituted by the Supreme Court under the Lodha Committee recommendation and there were three members in that – Anil Kumble, Mohinder Amarnath and Diana Edulji. They backed out for different reasons. The Supreme Court didn’t set up another committee. So the CoA set up a working group, a totally temporary, ad-hoc body. It has no status.”

Although Madhya Pradesh Cricket Association member Sanjeev Gupta had written to the ethics officer stating that the CoA could “neither appoint CAC nor any other cricket committee, assigning them powers already assigned to Cricket Committee under Rule 26(2) & 24(5) (of the new BCCI constitution), legal opinion went in the CoA’s favour.

Accordingly, the ad-hoc CAC will interview the short-listed candidates for the post of the Indian team head coach and will pick the new coach, expectedly by mid-August.