PIL seeking BCCI follow government regulations

A public interest litigation (PIL) has been filed in Allahabad High Court seeking direction to the sports ministry to get Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) registered or else set up a separate body for development of cricket in India.

Updated on: Apr 24, 2012, 19:27:37 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

A public interest litigation (PIL) has been filed in Allahabad High Court seeking direction to the sports ministry to get Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) registered or else set up a separate body for development of cricket in India.

The PIL has been filed by a UP cadre Indian Police Service official Amitabh Thakur and his wife Nutan Thakur and slated for hearing on Wednesday.

The litigation says that the Sports Ministry has given recognition to various National Sports Federations but BCCI was not part of it.

Despite that, the BCCI was getting all privileges and benefits of being a de-facto National Sports Federation of cricket from the government. And, the government has not been able to do anything about it.

The petition also claimed that BCCI was also violating government rules as only a recognised sports federation can send nominations for awards such as Arjun Award or Dronacharya Award. The use of India by BCCI was violation of Emblems and Names (Prevention of Improper Use) Act, 1950, the petition claimed.

The BCCI, which claims itself to be a private body, had refused to come under the ambit of Right To Information law like other sports federations.

BCCI itself strongly insists that it is a private autonomous body having no control and affiliation with the Government. It also insists that it has never applied for being recognized as a NSF. “BCCI is enjoying privileges and breaking laws while strongly resisting any accountability and responsibility towards the Government or the People. This makes it look like being above law of the land,” the petition said.

The petition has asked the High Court to direct that the government to ask BCCI to become a recognized NSF and if BCCI does not agree, then the government should appoint some other Cricket Association as national sports federation as per the prevailing rules to end any anomaly.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

Get the Cricket Live Score! including IPL Matches and track ICC rankings shifts, Cricket Schedule, and Players Stats along with detailed score profiles of Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Shubman Gill.