The Hindu : Sport : Apex Court speaks on cricket

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Feb 03, 2005

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Sport

Apex Court speaks on cricket

By N.U. Abilash

CHENNAI, FEB. 2. The ruling by a five-member bench of the Supreme Court that the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is an autonomous body on Wednesday is the fifth time since 1989 that the apex court has issued a ruling on matters relating to Indian cricket. The court's decision that the BCCI cannot be considered as falling into the ambit of the `State' as defined by Article 12 was in response to a case filed by Zee Telefilms challenging BCCI's cancellation of the bidding process for the four-year TV rights from October 2004 after the Mumbai-based television company had emerged as the highest bidder with $308 million.

Zee Telefilms' contention was that the cancellation of the bidding process amounted to a violation of its fundamental rights and the five-member bench, comprising Justices N. Santosh Hegde, S.N. Variava, B.P. Singh, H.K. Sema and S.B. Singh, ruled that Zee's case was not maintainable stating that the government has no regulatory authority over the BCCI.

The first Supreme Court intervention on cricket came in the wake of the BCCI banning six top Indian players — captain Dilip Vengsarkar, Kapil Dev, Ravi Shastri, Arun Lal, Mohammed Azharuddin and Kiran More — on August 6, 1989, from playing international cricket for a period of one year. The punishment, which was prompted by a complaint from the national cricket boards of the US and Canada to the ICC, came in the wake of the participation by the players in a series of exhibition matches in those countries following India's ill-fated tour of the West Indies in April 1989. The six players challenged the ban in the Supreme Court and a bench headed by Justice E.S. Venkatramiah applied the MRTP Act to rule in favour of the players that the ban restrained their trade.

On November 15, 1993, the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB), headed by its president Jagmohan Dalmiya, moved the Supreme Court to ensure that the production equipment of UK-based company Trans World International (TWI), CAB's television partner for the ongoing Hero Cup One-day tournament to mark its diamond jubilee, was released by the Customs Department in Mumbai.

The Customs Department had confiscated the equipment following instructions from the Information and Broadcasting Ministry citing the Indian Telegraph Act of 1885 according to which "no agency other than that belonging to or appointed by the government of India has a right to telecast any event live by uplinking signals from Indian soil." In the eye of the storm was the CAB's decision to overlook the claims of Doordarshan as host broadcaster and selling the television rights of the tournament to the highest bidder, TWI.

The SC asked the Customs Department to release the equipment and asked the secretary of the Department of Telecommunications to hold a meeting on the same day and communicate the decision to the Court by 7.30 in the evening. The secretary, N. Vittal, issued the order that TWI will have to get the permission from DD for uplinking through VSNL. The CAB officials challenged the order in the SC and almost at the stroke of midnight the SC bench comprising Justices J.S. Verma and P.B. Sawant overruled the government order and directed that TWI could "generate its own signals by focussing their cameras on the ground where the matches were being played."

Hardly a year had passed when cricket matters were before the Supreme Court yet again! On October 3, 1994, just before the home series against the West Indies, the BCCI, headed by its president I.S. Bindra, appealed to the apex court following VSNL being forced by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry to return the advance it received from ESPN, BCCI's television partner for the series, for uplinking facilities. A bench of the apex court comprising Justices P.B. Sawant, S. Mohan and B.P. Jeevan Reddy ruled in favour of the BCCI ordering the government to grant uplinking facilities for ESPN and also ensuring that the Indian telecasting rights for the series lies with Doordarshan.

On January 10 this year, the Supreme Court came out with its fourth intervention on cricket when it made absolute its interim order of October 11, 2004, staying the appointment of retired Supreme Court judge Justice S. Mohan as the administrator of the BCCI. A bench of the Supreme Court, comprising Justice Santosh Hegde and Justice S.B. Sinha, had asked the BCCI to hold its adjourned Annual General Body Meeting (AGM) of September 29 so that the elections of Ranbir Singh Mahendra and other office bearers could be ratified thereby ending the term of the old set of office-bearers headed by Jagmohan Dalmiya.

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