New Delhi: The Supreme Court today kept the pressure on N Srinivasan in the IPL spot-fixing and betting case. The apex court said Srinivasan that immediate action needed to be taken against Gurunath Meiyappan and felt the best way to ensure this would be to keep the BCCI President-in-exile out of it.
IPL spot-fixing: Difficult to accept there was no conflict of interest, says SC to N Srinivasan
The SC recommended three options to Srinivasan’s counsel to proceed further in the matter.
- Resume with BCCI elections without Srinivasan and constitute a new BCCI body to decide over the matter.
- Constitute a body of BCCI governing council members to decide over the matter.
- `Constitute a committee of former judges that will take decision on the impending BCCI elections as well as other matters.
Srinivasan’s counsel inquired with the SC if any other options other than three suggested by it could be explored, to which the court responded by setting a deadline of IST 2:00 pm for Srinivasan’s legal team to come up with an alternative.
During the December 8 hearing, the bench headed by Justice S Thakur and F M Kalifullah had grilled Srinivasan on conflict of interest and said it was difficult for it to accept that the involvement of his son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan – a team official of Chennai Super Kings – in betting during the IPL 2013 did not result in conflict of interest.
In the previous hearings, the court had questioned the BCCI as to why IPL franchise CSK shouldn’t be disqualified from the IPL and asked them to act immediately on the Justice (Retd) Mukul Mudgal report.
The court also had said that BCCI elections should go ahead, but directed that all board members who are under investigation to keep away. Then, it asked the Indian board if there was any provision in its constitution to debar Srinivasan from contesting the BCCI polls in future.
Spot-fixing and betting scandal in cricket surfaced in 2013 with Delhi Police arresting three Rajasthan Royals players of cash rich IPL – S Sreesanth, Ajit Chandila and Ankeet Chavan – in a midnight raid in Mumbai. Then, Mumbai police also unearthed betting links after they arrested Srinivasan’s son-in-law Meiyappan and Bollywood actor Vindu Dara Singh.
Last October, the apex court had constituted the Justice Mukul Mudgal committee to investigate the IPL spot-fixing and betting case. The three-member panel led by Justice Mudgal, a retired Punjab and Haryana High Court judge, also includes Additional Solicitor General L Nageswara Rao and senior advocate Nilay Dutta in the committee.
In the follow up, the court had asked the committee to continue its investigation of the persons named in the sealed envelope and the committee was also given greater powers to effectively conduct its probe. Then, the committee submitted its final report to the apex court on November 3, thus allowing the court to proceed with the final phase of hearing.
Bureau Report
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