Birth of the Lodha and Mudgal Committee
BCCI is amenable to writ jurisdiction Under Article 226 of the Constitution
Bench: T.S. Thakur, Fakkir Mohamed Kalifulla
Facts:
There were match fixing, nepotism and other corruption charges against the management of the BCCI which included Mr. N. Srinivasan’s who along with being the BCCI President was also the Vice-Chairman and MD of India Cements Ltd. The Cricket Association of Bihar filed an appeal challenging, among other things, the validity of certain amendments made to the Board of Control for Cricket in India (“BCCI”) “Regulations’ for Players, Team Officials, Managers, Umpires & Administrators in 2008 which permitted the BCCI’s administrators to acquire commercial interest in the BCCI’s premier twenty20 cricket competitions.
Issue:
Whether a writ petition was maintainable against the BCCI with respect to its ‘public functions’.
Judgement:
The PIL filed in the High Court, and appeal in the Supreme Courtled to the formation of the Justice Mukul Mudgal Committee to inquire into the affairs of the BCCI. Any organization or entity that has such pervasive control over the game and its affairs and such powers as can make dreams end up in smoke or come true cannot be said to be undertaking any private activity. The functions of the Board are clearly public functions. Hence the amendments were claimed to legally unsound as it violated a fundamental tenet of law and a principle of natural justice, that no one can be a judge in his own cause.It cannot be said that the functions are not public functions or that the entity discharging the same is not answerable on the standards generally applicable to judicial review of State action. BCCI may not be State Under Article 12 of the Constitution but is certainly amenable to writ jurisdiction Under Article 226 of the Constitution of India. In January 2017, the Supreme Court of India removed the BCCI’s President N. Srinivasan from his post.
