NEW DELHI: The Board of Control for Cricket in India will hold an emergency meeting in Chennai today to discuss the ongoing spot-fixing scandal in the India Premier League that led to the resignation of three top officials.
“I’ve requested the president (Narainswamy Srinivasan) to call for an emergency meeting of the working committee and he has agreed,” BCCI joint secretary Anurag Thakur said from New Delhi yesterday. “We’ve enough issues to discuss and all of them will be discussed at the meeting.” “It became my responsibility to initiate a call for the meeting once the secretary resigned,” Thakur said.
There have been calls for Srinivasan to step down because his son-in-law and Chennai Super Kings official Gurunath Meiyappan has been arrested by police in the spot-fixing probe.
But Srinivasan has refused, saying there is no allegation against him and he wouldn’t influence an ongoing internal probe ordered by the BCCI.
Meanwhile, IPL Chairman Rajeev Shukla yesterday resigned from the high-profile position in the wake of the raging spot-fixing scandal that has rocked Indian cricket, piling up pressure on N Srinivasan to follow suit.
Shukla took the decision to quit saying that he felt it necessary to do so in the light of the recent developments.
“I’ve decided to quit as IPL chairman,” Shukla said. “It’s a decision which I was pondering over for some time. Sanjay Jagdale and Ajay Shirke resigned in the best interest of Indian cricket, and I thought this is the right time for me.” Shukla said that he also took into account the resignations of BCCI secretary Sanjay Jagdale and treasurer Ajay Shirke before taking the decision to step down.
“Sanjay Jagdale and Ajay Shirke resigned in the best interest of Indian cricket. I thought this is the right time,” he said.
“I was given the task of IPL chairmanship which I tried to perform to the best of my abilities. The tournament was organized well despite all the controversies. The stadiums were jam-packed which proved that IPL was still popular,” Shukla said.
He said that he never hankered for any position and was only discharging the responsibilities given to him.
“I have never hankered for any position in the BCCI. I will serve cricket in whatever role I am given,” he said.
Three demands
However, the Tamil Nadu strongman wants three of his demands to be met before he quits.
Srinivasan’s three demands are that he should be reinstated as president if he comes out clean after the probe, that he should represent India in ICC meetings and that secretary Sanjay Jagdale and Treasurer Ajay Shirke should not be in the new panel as they had ditched him.
The BCCI members, it is learned, are not in favor of ignoring Jagdale and Shirke in the new panel and are unlikely to accept that demand. Srinivasan will be told clearly by the members that his position was “untenable” under the circumstances and it would be in the interest of Indian cricket that he stepped down on moral grounds.
If he continued to remain adamant, most of the Board officials will then to quit and create a constitutional crisis within the Board, leaving him with no option but to step down.
The working committee has 24 members and it has been largely summoned to gauge the mood, which was heavily against Srinivasan. As per norm, the resignation letters of Shirke and Jagdale will be tabled at the meeting for discussion and the members are likely to vehemently oppose the acceptance of the letter.
“Jagdale and Shirke have done nothing wrong and we expect that majority of members to oppose their resignation. It will be interesting to see how Srinivasan reacts in that situation,” “an influential member of the working committee said.
