Sourav Ganguly, the former India skipper, took charge as the 39th BCCI President in October last year. However, it's a position Ganguly will have to relinquish by July 2020 as per the newly adopted board constitution.
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The new BCCI constitution based on justice RM Lodha committee's reforms says, “any person who has been an office bearer in state as well as BCCI for consecutive period of six years will have to go for compulsory cooling off period of three years.”
Notably, Ganguly was the secretary and later President of the Cricket Association of Bengal for five plus years before taking over in his current role.
However, the original petitioner in the 2013 IPL spot-fixing case Aditya Verma disagrees with the clause and he is ready to appeal to the Supreme Court to exempt Ganguly's compulsory three-year cooling off period.
"Being the original petitioner on whose PIL the whole constitutional revamp happened, I have decided to file a plea that apex court should let Sourav Ganguly and his team (secretary Jay Shah in this case) continue for a term of three years," Verma told PTI on Monday.
Shah has previously served as the secretary of Gujarat Cricket Association for more than five years and thus he will also have to go into compulsory cooling off.
So why does Verma want to file another petition?
"My entire intention was to ensure BCCI has a transparent functioning. If a person of Sourav's stature can't complete his term, then what's the use?"
The second reason according to Verma is continuity.
"The BCCI had been completely mismanaged by the Committee of Administrators (CoA) for nearly three years. Any person coming in charge needs to time to put a system in place. Ganguly and his team must be given that time," he said.
"If you look at the current scenario. There is a complete lockdown in the country due to COVID-19 pandemic. Supposedly we lose two months of activity, it is unfair on both Ganguly and Shah that they are not given a fair chance to set the house in order. That will be my plea," Aditya Verma concluded.
(With PTI inputs)
