Lodha panel not surprised, knew it was coming

New Delhi : Ramachandra Guha’s resignation from the Committee of Administrators (CoA) hasn’t come as a surprise to the members of the Justice RM Lodha panel. In fact, the panel had been dreading such a development for a while now as CoA hadn’t made much progress in the last six months in implementing the reforms the panel had recommended.  “Sadly, CoA has failed to deliver. None of the issues it was mandated to push through has been taken to its logical conclusion,” a source close to the panel said. “CoA had come into picture in January. Its immediate responsibility was to address serious issues such as conflict of interest, one-state one-vote, age and tenure, forming players’ association and holding an Annual General Meeting (AGM) to elect a new body. Unfortunately, they got stuck in the tussle between BCCI and ICC over revenue and governance model, revised pay structure for players and coaching staff and India’s pullout threat from the Champions Trophy,” the source said.
“BCCI acting secretary Amitabh Choudhary and CEO Rahul Johri were supposed to take care of these issues. Instead of focussing on governance, CoA got more interested in management. We aren’t saying it shouldn’t have done whatever it did. But these issues were secondary, CoA’s priority should have always remained the implementation of the Lodha panel recommendations,” the source added. In fact, Justice Lodha had urged CoA to focus more on the governance part and implementing the reforms last month. “The management and governance shouldn’t be mixed up. These are two different areas,” he had said.