BCCI begins operation clean-up, appoints ombudsman

Cracking the whip
on conflict of
interest in the Board, the BCCI today unveiled a slew of reforms, including the appointment of a retired judge as its ombudsman, as part of its promised clean-up operation.
The Board also decided to trim some of its sub- committees, dropped Indian Team Director Ravi Shastri from the IPL Governing Council and axed Roger Binny from the selection panel to negate the perceived conflict of interest.
The decisions were taken at the Board's 86th Annual General Meeting in which former captain Sourav Ganguly was appointed Chairman of the Technical Committee, replacing Anil Kumble.

Besides, Visakhapatnam, Ranchi, Indore, Pune, Dharamsala and Rajkot

were accorded the status of Test venues.
"Everybody spoke in the meeting in favour of a clean and transparent Board," BCCI President Shashank Manohar told reporters after the meeting.

Justice (Retd) A P Shah
was named the ombudsman who will
now deal with any complaints of conflict of interest.

"
Principally, we have decided on issues regarding conflict of interest. The detailing would be done by legal committee in two months' time," he said.
"The Ombudsman appointed by Board is Justice e A P Shah who would look into complaints of conflict of interest. The Board has also decided to have people who are professionals. The accounts were passed and the entire AGM report is already on the website," Manohar said detailing the decisions taken at the AGM.

Gagan Khoda and MSK Prasad were named the new members in the selection
Committee, replacing Rajinder Singh Hans and Binny.
Besides, the BCCI decided to retain Rajeev Shukla as the Chairman of the IPL Governing Council, which would comprise Jyotiraditya Scindia, M P Pandove, Ajay Shirke and Ganguly.
"Whatever I had said a month ago, that we would clean up the system and try to run the Board in a transparent fashion, we have done everything we could," Manohar said.

"To eliminate bias from the decision-making process, we have appointed AP Shah, who is a former chief justice... working committee size would remain but other committees will not have more than 7-8 people," he added.

The clean-up operation has been triggered by the 2013 IPL spot-fixing scandal, which was investigated by the Supreme Court-appointed R M Lodha committee.
The apex court-appointed panel
had suspended Chennai
Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals for two years for their officials' involvement in the scandal. Manohar said an auction for two new teams would be held soon.