Did Sourav Ganguly’s not joining BJP cause his BCCI exit?
A political row has emerged over Sourav Ganguly’s not being able to retain the presidency of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). He has been the cricket board president for three years, with the term getting over on October 18, when elections would be held for fresh terms.
However, all the posts for which elections would be held have only one candidate each, so the elections would be merely a formality. Former India cricketer and 1983 World Cup winner Roger Binny, Karnataka Cricket Association president, will succeed Ganguly in the role.
Amit Shah’s son Jay Shah, also the president of Gujarat Cricket Association, will be re-elected as the secretary and Congress’s Rajya Sabha MP Rajiv Shukla as vice-president.
The newcomers in the BCCI ‘cabinet’ would be Ashish Shelar, a BJP MLA who is the party’s Mumbai president and chief whip in the assembly, as treasurer and Devajit Saikia, a close aide of Assam’s BJP Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, as joint secretary.
Sources told Mint that Ganguly was keen on a second term and had reached Mumbai on Monday to hold meetings with several stakeholders. But he was told there is no precedence of giving a second term to the Board president.
According to a Hindustan Times report yesterday, Ganguly’s exit became evident when his name did not feature among options for the top post at a high-profile meeting of senior past BCCI administrators with political clout in New Delhi last week. At the meeting, according to Crizbuzz, Ganguly was criticised for non-performing as the BCCI president.
The Supreme Court had recently allowed the continuation of the terms of the current incumbents to the posts of president and secretary for another three years.
It ruled that a cricket administrator can have a continuous tenure of 12 years, which includes six years in state associations, before the cooling-off period of three years triggers. This ruling overturned the Supreme Court-appointed Justice (Retired) RM Lodha Committee-approved BCCI constitution’s earlier rule of the three-year cooling-off period triggering after a six-year period of two consecutive terms of three years each in a state cricket association or the BCCI.
Therefore, it was expected that both the 50-year-old Ganguly and Shah would continue. Hence, the news of the former’s not continuing but the latter’s continuing has led to the political row.
Not just not continuing as BCCI president, even his wish, sources say, of becoming the ICC chairman has been nixed.
Sources say that the former Team India captain’s refusal to join the BJP is the primary reason for his losing support to continue as president.
It may be recalled that in recent times, the BJP has indicated several times, albeit indirectly, that Ganguly would be joining the party and may even be nominated to the Rajya Sabha. Speculation started to become rife from before the 2021 Bengal assembly elections.
It may also be recalled that Amit Shah and few BJP leaders had visited Ganguly’s residence here on May 6 and last January, when he was admitted to a Kolkata hospital after suffering a mild heart attack, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had called him to enquire about his health.
But Ganguly’s steadfast refusal to join the saffron camp seems to have led to the current situation.
Trinamool MP Santanu Sen has termed this as another example of “political vendetta” in a tweet while the party’s state secretary Kunal Ghosh said “it seems the BJP is trying to humiliate Sourav”. Sen told the TV channel Aaj Tak that the BCCI’s decision was “not just a politically influenced act but cheap saffronisation of sports”.
The BJP, though, has denied any connection of the BCCI’s decision with politics.
Variously known as ‘Dada’ and ‘Prince of Kolkata’, Sourav entered cricket administration when he became the president of the Cricket Association of Bengal in 2015, before taking the helm of the national association in 2019 for a three-year term.
A BCCI source told the news agency PTI that he had been offered the post of IPL chairman but he “politely declined”, his logic being “he cannot accept becoming head of a sub-committee in BCCI after heading the same institution”. The source also said that Ganguly was keen to continue in his present post for another term.
Meanwhile, Ganguly gave a statement today that attempted to steer clear of any controversy. He said that “after all these terms, you have to leave and go” and that “you cannot play forever and you cannot remain in administration forever”, adding he will “go on to do bigger things in life”.
