Anurag Thakur, former BCCI president, apologises to Supreme Court
Anurag Thakur, who faced charges of perjury for obstructing the implementation of the Justice Lodha Panel recommendations on age and tenure caps in the BCCI, has tendered an apology to the Supreme Court.
Anurag Thakur, the former president of the BCCI, gave an “unconditional apology” Monday to the Supreme Court which had ordered his dismissal from the game’s most powerful body in January.
Thakur faces a court petition later this month for allegedly obstructing the implementation of the Justice Lodha recommendations to reform the administration of the board.
But at a court session where the date for the full hearing was set for April 17, Thakur’s lawyer PS Patwalia read a statement in which his client “tendered my unconditional and unqualified apology”.
“I had not intended to file any false information,” the statement added, which was delivered by Patwalia as Thakur sat alongside him.
Thakur was dismissed from the post of president after the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) consistently stalled on implementing the reforms proposed by a former top judge, RM Lodha, and which had been endorsed by the court.
The proposals included setting age and term limits on office bearers within the board.
India’s Supreme Court has since appointed a top anti-corruption troubleshooter, Vinod Rai, as head of a team to oversee the running of the powerful cricket board.
The BCCI is the wealthiest of all of the sport’s national boards, netting massive money from sponsorship and TV deals.It has also been embroiled in a series of scandals, including accusations of corruption and match-fixing that tarnished the 2013 edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL).
A corruption and match-fixing scandal in the sixth edition of the IPL in 2013 brought about the downfall of the board’s then-president N Srinivasan after his son-in-law was accused of betting on matches.