Hearing a public interest litigation which objects to certain changes in rules of Board of Control for Cricket in India, alleging that the changes were made only for the sake of its president N Srinivasan, the Bombay High Court today refused to stay the operation of these rules.
HC, however, asked BCCI and Srinivasan to file replies within a month to the petition, filed by Cricket Association of Bihar.
"It is not possible to grant interim relief (at this stage)... We are looking at the rules and not the personalities," said the division bench of S J Vajifdar and Gautam Patel.
The PIL challenges the amended regulation 6.2.4 which says that except IPL and Champions League Twenty-20, no administrator, officer, player or umpire shall have any direct or indirect commercial interest in the matches or events conducted by the cricket board.
Petition points out that IPL and Champions League 20-20 were left out only to benefit Srinivasan (who owns the IPL franchise Chennai Super Kings).
The petition also challenges amendment to clause 15, whereby rules for election of president were revised. As per the original rules, each zone could elect the BCCI President by rotation, but the amendment provided that a zone can nominate a person from outside that zone too, and this was meant to benefit Srinivasan, the PIL says.
The court today said that before considering request for stay to these amendments, it would hear the board and its chief.
