Acting on a Public Interest Litigation filed by former first-class player Nikhil Rathod from Rajkot, the Gujarat High Court on Thursday issued a notice to the secretary of the Saurashtra Cricket Association, the state charity commissioner, and the chairman and electoral officer of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, The Indian Express reported.
In his PIL, Rathod has alleged nepotism, misuse of power, lack of transparency by office-bearers and non-compliance of Lodha Commission recommendations by the SCA.
Rathod, who played Ranji Trophy for Saurashtra and also represented India at the Under-19 World Cup, has alleged that the SCA is being completely controlled “by a single family since its inception on 1984”.
“Membership of the SCA remains confined to a few family and friends and its management and control has remained in the hands of a single family or its coterie for the past three-four decades i.e. from the very inception of the SCA,” Rathod stated in his petition.
The person Rathod is taking aim at is former BCCI secretary Niranjan Shah. The petitioner has said that Shah and his son Jaydev, who is the current president of the SCA, have been running the association like a “family business”.
Rathod accused Shah of manipulating SCA elections and “appointing the existing governing body members by rotation”. He stated that the association passed a resolution in 2013-14 which gave life membership of the SCA to all the children of the existing members.
Rathod has requested the Court to appoint an independent auditor to check the SCA’s accounts for the past 10 years and also declare the associations September 2019 elections as void ab-initio and contrary to the stipulations of the prior apex court judgment.