Lodha Panel & The BCCI: Katju Reads Out The Law To The Supreme Court 

If it takes a thief to catch one, it probably takes a former Supreme Court judge to call out the constitutional impropriety of the highest court for trying to make the law instead of merely interpreting it.

Markandey Katju, former Supreme Court justice, has broken the mould of judges choosing their words carefully. He has often opted for political incorrectness and saying it like it is. In the past, he has disclosed how three former Chief Justices were complicit in appointing a corrupt judge, taken on the media for their lack of supervision, challenged controversial Islamic supremacist Zakir Naik over his many claims, and, most famously, called 90 percent of Indians “fools.”

So chances are that his views on the Supreme Court’s interference in how the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) should be run will be deemed to be another of his maverick ideas and dismissed. The fact is, he has spoken the truth like no other former judge, about the Supreme Court’s decision to shove the Lodha panel’s recommendations down the BCCI’s unwilling throat.

Katju minced no words. He said:

No one could have put it better. What this writer has been pointing out, that the Supreme Court is exceeding its constitutional brief repeatedly, is now confirmed by a former Supreme Court justice himself.

Reproduced below are excerpts from what one had to say just last month when the court insisted that the Lodha panel’s recommendations be implemented in toto by the BCCI:

“You don’t have to be an admirer of the way the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) manages its affairs to realise that the Supreme Court has gone way beyond its constitutional brief to try and impose a solution on how the cricket body should be run. You don’t have to be against what the RM Lodha committee has recommended for the BCCI to acknowledge that a society registered in Tamil Nadu should be restructured according to what the Supreme Court decides, and not what the law under which BCCI functions states.

“You don’t have to be in love with the cabal that runs BCCI and its incestuous relationship with politicians, to point out that this is almost exactly how the Supreme Court runs itself: by selecting and appointing judges all by itself through an opaque and unaccountable collegium. All efforts by the people’s representatives to have a say in how judges are selected and the courts are run have come to naught.

“The simple point: it is not the Supreme Court’s job to decide how the BCCI or cricket should be administered. Sure, if there are allegations of hanky-panky and transgressions of the law, the courts can step in. But that’s about it.

“It is also worth repeating this old proverb for the benefit of the honourable bench of Chief Justice TS Thakur and Justice FMI Kalifulla that is deciding the BCCI’s fate: you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink. Retired judges like Lodha can offer a set of recommendations on how the BCCI should be structured, but at the end of the day, the Supreme Court is not going to run cricket in India on a day-to-day basis. When the court’s attention shifts away from cricket to less important issues like upholding the law, the BCCI will find a way to get around the rules imposed by the court. When the cat is away, the mice will play.

“So, cricket is not going to be run very much better than how it is run now, except that it will now be run by proxies. If someone over 70 is barred from remaining on the BCCI’s management, some nominee of his will take his place and do his bidding. After all, don’t we have the wives of sarpanches sitting on panchayat seats reserved for women? Haven’t we seen Rabri Devi run Bihar when Lalu Prasad couldn’t do so? Haven’t we seen O. Panneerselvam run Tamil Nadu as proxy Chief Minister when his boss Jayalalithaa was convicted for corruption?

“The BCCI looks like a huge monolith right now, but this monopoly may not last forever. The future of cricket, as of any other sport, will be in clubs and city teams. So will the Supreme Court also decide how they will be run?

“Will the Supreme Court force a future Subhash Chandra, who some time ago floated a rival cricket league for T20, to follow the prescription it has written down for the BCCI? Will the court tomorrow tell Shah Rukh Khan how he will run Kolkata Knight Riders?

“Cricket is a game; there is money in it; it will attract investors and audiences. It could do with a regulatory body that is fair and impartial. It is this regulatory body that is missing. Instead of asking the government to set up one, it has focused on how the BCCI should be run, as if courts have all the answers. What if the BCCI still remains a rogue body even after all this change? Will the Supreme Court then offer a mea culpa?”

Read the full story on the Supreme Court’s folly here.