Cooling Off Clause Mountain of Snow, BCCI Was Waiting For Weather to Change: Justice RM Lodha

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court allowed the BCCI to amend its constitution that would allow office bearers of the cricket board to have two successive terms spanning six years. Overall, an office bearer can now have a tenure of 12 continuous years – six years in state association followed by six in BCCI – after which the cooling off period gets triggered.

This has thus cleared the decks for the current BCCI president Sourav Ganguly and board general secretary Jay Shah to continue into their respective roles until 2025.

Also Read: Apex Court Allows BCCI To Modify Mandatory Cooling Off Period

After the IPL spot-fixing scandal of 2013, the SC-mandated panel led by Justice RM Lodha had recommended a series of reforms in the BCCI. It included a cooling off period of three years for a board official after having served a fixed term of three years.

However, BCCI continued to oppose the clause which was then modified in 2018 to make it a total of six years that included a term in the state association.

Reacting to the latest judgment, Lodha said the court must have felt the clause required changes but stood by his recommendations which were implemented in 2016.

“Our governance principles were accepted by the Supreme Court in its July 18, 2016 order," Lodha told Hindustan Times. “Maybe over a period of time the court felt it needed to be changed. We gave the report with a lot of thinking, study and homework. The idea of cooling off was also found meritorious. Then, the court must have thought that the previous orders, if allowed to stand, would manifest injustice to cricket administration."

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Lodha said the BCCI office-bearers found the cooling off clause as a “mountain of snow".  “The cooling off clause is a mountain of snow. The office-bearers find it difficult to navigate and wait for the weather to change. That’s ok. We must bow down to the Supreme Court," he was quoted as saying.

He added, “Maybe it’s evolution of new jurisprudence. Certain orders remain final and with others…maybe the court thought continuity of office-bearers was important. There must have been some good reasons which convinced the court to change its previous orders."

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