The Supreme Court today said that it would hear on Friday the plea of Cricket Association of Bihar (CAB) seeking to restrain N. Srinivasan from contesting for the post of BCCI President at the Annual General Meeting of the board scheduled on September 29 in Chennai.
“All right. We will hear it on Friday,” a Bench headed by Justice A.K. Patnaik said when the counsel for CAB sought an urgent hearing of the plea on the issue.
CAB, in its application, has sought “interim injunction retraining respondent number 2 (Srinivasan) from contesting for the post of President of respondent number 1 (BCCI) in the Annual General Meeting to be held on September 29 at Chennai.”
It has also sought a direction to the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) that Srinivasan be not inducted in any committee of the board till the matter pending in the apex court is decided.
The court had earlier posted for October the hearing on cross appeals filed by BCCI and CAB against the Bombay High Court’s verdict declaring as illegal the probe panel appointed by the board to look into spot-fixing scandal.
It had on August 30 heard the petition filed by Aditya Verma, Secretary, CAB, challenging the High Court order refusing to appoint a fresh committee to probe the scam.
The court had also issued notices to BCCI, Srinivasan, his company India Cements which owns IPL team Chennai Super Kings, and the Rajasthan Royals on the plea.
CAB has pleaded that when the High Court has declared the panel of two judges as unconstitutional, it should have appointed a fresh committee to look into the issue.
The apex court had on August 7 refused to grant interim stay on the High Court verdict, derailing the plan of Srinivasan to return as chief of BCCI.
Srinivasan had stepped aside from discharging his duties as BCCI President in the light of spot-ixing and betting scandal which allegedly involved his son-in-law and Chennai Super Kings team’s former principal Gurunath Meiyappan.
The High Court order had come on July 30 just two days after the panel, comprising two former judges of the Madras High Court Justices T. Jayarama Chouta and R. Balasubramanian, submitted its report giving a clean chit to all those against whom the probe was conducted.
The panel had gone into the charges against India Cements Ltd, Meiyappan and Raj Kundra, co-owner of Rajasthan Royals.
The panel was set up by BCCI and IPL Governing Council after the surfacing of the betting and fixing scandal.