IPL Spot-Fixing Petitioner Aditya Verma To Approach Supreme Court For Sourav Ganguly

The original petitioner in the 2013 IPL spot-fixing case Aditya Verma will appeal to the Supreme Court to exempt BCCI president Sourav Ganguly’s compulsory three-year cooling-off period which starts in July. As per the current rule, a cooling-off period of three years is mandatory for any office-bearer who has served two three-year terms at a state association or the BCCI.

Consequently, Sourav Ganguly, who was named the BCCI president in October last year, was only given ten months to remain in charge of the board. The former India skipper was the president of Cricket Association of Bengal before taking over as BCCI head and will have to go on a cooling off period of three years from September this year.

However, Aditya Verma wants Sourav Ganguly to stay as the BCCI president for more than ten months. And he has now decided to approach the Supreme Court for the same.

“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.

Like Ganguly, Shah will also have to go into compulsory cooling off as he has been the secretary of Gujarat Cricket Association for five plus years.

“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?,” Verma further added.

The second reason behind approaching the Supreme Court is to ensure 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,” Verma 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,” Verma added.

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