New BCCI committee to identify hurdles in implementing Lodha reforms

Nearly a year after the Supreme Court judgement approving a majority of the Lodha Committee recommendations, the BCCI has set up a committee of its own to identify "exceptional and extremely limited areas of difficulty" in the implementation of the reforms.

The committee's suggestions will be presented to the Committee of Administrators, a court-appointed panel tasked with running the board until fresh elections under the Lodha guidelines. No CoA representative is part of this new BCCI committee, which was announced during the board's special general meeting in Mumbai on Monday.

This move seems likely to delay the implementation of the reforms, which were approved by the Supreme Court in July 2016, but the BCCI acting secretary, Amitabh Choudhary, has said it was formed with the intention of examining "how best to quickly implement [the recommendations]." Choudhary stated the committee, whose members will be named on Tuesday, will offer their report in a fortnight.

It is understood that apart from Choudhary, who will play the role of the convener, acting board president CK Khanna, treasurer Anirudh Chaudhary and a member from a north-east association are likely to be among the "five or six" members of the committee. They will have to come up with a decision on this matter before July 14, when the Supreme Court is set to hear the case again.

"The house deliberated in detail and with a view to completing the implementation process, constituted a committee which will examine how best quickly to implement [the recommendations]," Choudhary told reporters. "The committee should have its first recommendations in a fortnight's time. So, that's as far as the implementation of the principal judgment is concerned."

"The committee will go into each and every action point necessitated by the principal judgment and then only those exceptional and extremely limited areas of difficulty would bring it to the notice of the CoA, which will thereafter decide the course of action."

Choudhary added that another SGM would have to be convened to approve the proposals of the committee which "will start its work in two days' time and the rest will follow."

The BCCI is inclined towards incorporating most of the Lodha committee's recommendations, a board official told ESPNcricinfo, except for policies such as the age cap of 70 years for office bearers, the tenure cap of nine years with cooling-off periods in between, the one-state-one-vote policy and the trimming down of the number of selectors from five to three.

These recommendations had drawn opposition from the BCCI even before the court's order last year and on Monday a senior state association official from the west zone indicated nothing had changed. "How can I let go of my vote?" asked the official. "These are the recommendations that the committee will have to sit down and decide on."

Some of the delay in the BCCI adopting the Lodha reforms has been because the state associations are averse to them, but when asked to list the recommendations that have been met with objections, Chaudhary said the board would convey their thoughts to the Supreme Court directly.

For a while now, the CoA has urged the board's member units to identify a few points of objection, which could be raised with the Supreme Court even as the other recommendations were implemented. A CoA official sounded optimistic of the BCCI toeing the Supreme Court's line after the meeting on Sunday.

"They understand that implementing Lodha is not an option [but is mandatory]," he told ESPNcricinfo. "So what is the point in obstructing and dragging it further? What we have told them is if you adopt the report with the two-three points you want the court to consider then the court will also look at it favourably. Otherwise the CoA will be left with no other option than to ask the court to enforce."