BCCI was on 25-year ‘tax holiday’

The Board of Control for Cricket in India, one of the richest sport bodies in the world, did not file returns on income from 1980-81 onwards, reports Anand Vasu.

It was a 25-year-old lapse that few outside the cricket board’s inner circle knew of. According to documents available with Hindustan Times, the Board of Control for Cricket in India, one of the richest sport bodies in the world, did not file returns on income from 1980-81 onwards.

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Over the last three years, the BCCI treasurer’s office has had its hands full trying to regularise accounts.

N. Srinivasan’s first job, when he took over as treasurer in 2005, was to try and regularise the registration of documents to the Registrar of Societies Act.

A top BCCI source confirmed the contents of the treasurer’s report that will be presented at the board’s 79th Annual General Meeting in Mumbai on September 27. “Yes, the returns were not filed since 1981, but they have now been regularised,” he told HT, declining to be identified because the report is yet to be presented.

The board, through its auditors, undertook the arduous task of collating the

necessary documents pertaining to that 25-year period and filed them with the registrar in 2007. The BCCI obtained a condonation (pardon by treating the offender as if the offence had not occurred) of delay in March 2007 and since then has been filing returns on time.