Removes all India Cements staff
Mumbai: Complying with the Supreme Court’s order, the BCCI has given marching orders to all the employees of India Cements or its associate companies who were also part of the cricket board.
Confirming the development, a BCCI source told PTI on Monday, “All India Cements employees connected with the BCCI have been taken out of the board as per the Supreme Court’s order.”
The notable faces among them are Tamil Nadu Cricket Association secretary and a close aide of former BCCI president N Srinivasan, Kashi Viswanathan, who was a member of the National Cricket Academy (NCA) and New Area Development sub-committees. He headed the costs department of India Cements for a long time and retired only a couple of years back.
Apart from Vishwanathan, other India Cements employees who have been removed from the BCCI until the Supreme Court’s final orders are the Indian team’s logistics manager MA Satheesh, chief financial officer of the Indian Premier League Prasanna Kannan and the joint secretary of Tamil Nadu Cricket Association RI Palani, who is one of the senior managers of the company and is also a member of the BCCI zonal academies committee.
Interestingly, Satheesh, who was in Bangladesh with the Indian team for the ICC Twenty20 World Cup, was called back on Saturday after the Supreme Court’s order.
The apex court, during a hearing into the IPL spot-fixing and related issues on Friday, passed an interim order asking Sunil Gavaskar to take over as BCCI President for IPL affairs and Senior Vice President Shivlal Yadav to take charge of non-IPL matters.
It also ordered that employees of India Cements or its associate companies should not be part of the cricket board.
The Supreme Court, however, said players and commentators who are on India Cements’ payroll can be part of the BCCI.
Besides India captain MS Dhoni, who is a vice-president in the company, a number of present and former players including Ravichandran Ashwin, Dinesh Karthik, Rahul Dravid and cricketer-turned-commentator L Sivaramakrishnan are employed with India Cements.
BCCI members demand SGM for discussions
Meanwhile, some BCCI members have demanded the convening of a Special General Meeting of the Board to take stock of the situation in the wake of Supreme Court’s order replacing Srinivasan by Gavaskar to look after IPL 7 affairs.
“Yes. It’s not a requisition meeting, but some of us have demanded that SGM be convened to discuss the developments. I wrote to BCCI soon after the Court suggested the name of Gavaskar,” a top official of BCCI’s affliliated unit told PTI on Monday.
“But I am not sure whether the meeting can be convened or not because the matter is sub-judice,” the official said, adding that it was not a move to requisition a meeting but of members acting in their individual capacities.
Gavaskar has already started acting as the president of the Board for IPL matters in the UAE.
“I had a meeting with Mr. Ranjib Biswal – Chairman, IPL, and the Management Staff, in Dubai, earlier today. They briefed me on the various aspects related to the Pepsi IPL 2014, and updated me on the current status of this year’s season, which will commence on 16 April 2014 in the UAE. I am confident that the upcoming season of the Pepsi IPL 2014 will be a successful one,” Gavaskar said on March 29. (PTI)