SC order permits term extension to Ganguly & Shah

The Supreme Court of India on Wednesday acknowledged the proposed changes in the Board of Control for Cricket in India’s constitution, which will permit current president Sourav Ganguly and secretary Jay Shah to get an extension to their respective terms. 

The board had put in a plea for change of its constitution on compulsory cooling period and tenure of its office bearers. The apex court in its order expressed that office bearers can have continuous tenure of 12 years which remembers six years for State Association and six years in BCCI. Both Ganguly and Shah’s three-year term in the BCCI was set to expire shortly.

A bench of Judges DY Chandrachud and Hima Kohli said that an office bearer can have continuous tenure of 12 years which remembers six years for State Association and six years in BCCI before the cooling off period of three years triggers.

The bench said that an office bearer can serve on a particular post for two successive terms, both at the BCCI and the State Association level, after which he would need to serve a three years cooling-off period.

“The purpose of the cooling-off period is not to create undesirable monopolies”,

the bench said

The top court’s order came on the Board’s plea trying to change its constitution concerning the tenure of its office bearers including its President Sourav Ganguly and Secretary Jay Shah by getting rid of the obligatory cooling-off period between tenures of office bearers across state cricket association and the BCCI.

The BCCI, in its proposed amendment, has looked for the nullification of a cooling-off period for its office bearers which would enable Ganguly and Shah to go on in office as President and Secretary regardless of them having finished six years at respective state cricket associations.

Prior, the Justice R M Lodha-led committee had suggested reforms in the BCCI which have been accepted by the top court.

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The constitution of the BCCI, which was earlier supported by the top court, specifies a mandatory three-year cooling-off period for anybody who had served two consecutive terms of three years each in the state cricket association or the BCCI.

While Ganguly was an office bearer in the Cricket Association of Bengal, Shah had served in the Gujarat Cricket Association.