MUMBAI: If anyone thought that N Srinivasan would be down and out after the Supreme Court verdict on January 22 which barred him from contesting the BCCI elections till he ceased to be the owner of his IPL team the Chennai Super Kings, he or she was wrong.
Reliable sources have told TOI that the BCCI president in exile chaired Sunday’s Working Committee meeting of the Board, which decided to hold its elections on March 2.
Srinivasan even announced in the meeting that he would chair the AGM of the Board on March 2. By all indications, he is planning to divest CSK from his company India Cements, so that he is able to contest the BCCI elections.
“After informing us of his decision to chair both the meetings, a BCCI lawyer explained to us that as per their interpretation of the SC verdict, Srinivasan was not barred from chairing any BCCI meeting. As per the final court order, he has also not been barred from functioning as the BCCI president, till the elections of the body . He was only asked to step aside from functioning as the Board president as per the interim order of the SC,” said a source who attended the meeting.
Srinivasan has also made it clear that he would not spare Aditya Verma (the secretary of the un-recognised Bihar Cricket Association, and a petitioner against Srinivasan in the SC), and those supposedly backing his nemesis.
“He suggested an ‘internal inquiry’ of the BCCI against Shashank Manohar, IS Bindra and other past BCCI presidents, who have allegedly helped Verma, for bringing disrepute to the BCCI by dragging it to the court,” a source who attended the meeting said.
“The BCCI were also unanimous in their agreement to sue Verma for defamation,” he added.
According to noted lawyer Nalini Chidambaram, who represented Verma in the SC against Srinivasan, the latter’s act of chairing the BCCI meeting amounts to ‘misleading the SC.’
“SC has not re-instated him in the final verdict. It amounts to misleading SC, because in an earlier instance, the court had not appreciated Srinivasan attending a working committee meeting of the Board. His lawyer (Kapil Sibal) had to then apologise on behalf of his client for that. Sibal also promised the court that Srinivasan would not repeat this in the future. It was because of this that the court did not think it necessary to pass a ‘positive order’ in this regard,” Chidambaram said.
Explaining why Srinivasan still cannot attend the WC, she said: “The interim and the final verdict of the SC are co-existing.” She also sought to clear the feeling in Srinivasan’s camp that he had been given a ‘clean chit’ by SC in its final verdict.
“In the final order, the court has said clearly that there is ‘suspicion of a cover-up,’ which is a serious matter. So he hasn’t been given a clean chit by the SC,” she claimed.
Verma, meanwhile, wasn’t bogged down by Srinivasan’s decision to sue him. “If it is about cleaning the game of cricket, I am ready to face 100 such cases of defamation,” he said.
The battle is well and truly on and it could be bitter.
TOI | Feb 9, 2015
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