BCCI Working Committee to take up Neeraj Kumar appointment

When the members of the Board of Control for Cricket in India Working Committee meet in Kolkata on April 26, some of them may wonder if the Indian Premier League Governing Council has evolved so much as to make some decisions beyond its own domain.

The buzz that followed the IPL Governing Council meeting here earlier this week suggested that former Delhi Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar and Mr Madhusudan Sharma had been appointed as consultants to the BCCI Anti-Corruption Unit. It seemed to have escaped key peoples attention that the appointments needed to be ratified by the Working Committee.

BCCI Secretary Anurag Thakur's Media Release of Monday read: The GC (Governing Council) supported the recommendation of President, BCCI, to propose the appointment of Mr. Neeraj Kumar, former Commissioner of Police, Delhi and Mr. Madhusudan Sharma, IPS as consultants to further strengthen the Anti-Corruption Unit of BCCI.

A lot of people, including some sections of the media and, surprisingly, Mr Neeraj Kumar himself, assumed that the Governing Council's support was enough to be considered as appointment. Surely, his friends in the IPL GC, if not the BCCI President himself, could have advised him to hold his horses until his appointment is ratified by the Working Committee.

Surely, the IPL Governing Council was not the right platform for a BCCI ACU appointment to be discussed. After all, like many other panels with BCCI, it is only a sub-committee. The Working Committee, if not the BCCI General Body itself, would be the right forum for such issues to be discussed and for appointments to be finalised.

Come to think of it, it may be a formality for BCCI President Jagmohan Dalmiya and Mr Thakur to convince the 23-member Working Committee that the Board would benefit from Mr Neeraj Kumar and Mr Madhusudan Sharma's appointment to the BCCI ACU. But until that happens, it would be appropriate for all concerned to wait for the appointment to actualise.

Significantly and it cannot be dismissed as a footnote even as the Governing Council was discussing and supporting Mr Dalmiya's recommendation, Additional Sessions Judge Neena Bansal Krishna asked Delhi Police to show tangible proof spot-fixing in the IPL 2013 case against Rajasthan Royal players, S Sreesanth, Ankit Chavan and Ajit Chandila and others.

Will the Working Committee take that into cognisance when discussing Mr Dalmiya's recommendation? Some members have already indicated that they would rake the Additional Sessions Judge's stern viewpoint as a reflection of the work done by the Delhi Police investigators and their legal team that was charged with the task of filing a chargesheet.

Besides, questions have been raised about Delhi Police decision to transfer the case against Rajasthan Royals co-owner Raj Kundra to Rajasthan Police. It remains to be seen if the Working Committee will also take note of the questions that Justice Lodha Committee has raised about the process of appointments within BCCI so that everything seems transparent.