Vinod Rai Talks About Upcoming BCCI Elections & CoA Disagreements

Video Editor: Varun Sharma
Camera: Abhishek Ranjan & Shiv Kumar Maurya

“The people who had been in the business of administering cricket in the country, either in the state associations or in the BCCI itself weren’t willing to leave,” said former CAG and Chairman of Committee of Administrators (CoA) in conversation with The Quint.

Speaking about his latest book Rethinking Governance: Holding to Account India’s Public Institutions, Rai commented on the upcoming BCCI elections, being a “night watchman” in his role as the CoA chairman, and on differences with fellow CoA members. Here’s an edited excerpt of the interview:

I thought it was pretty interesting that in 2017, you got the news when you were at the airport, and your first reaction to that was, ‘Oh it feels like I am the night watchman.’ But the ‘night watchman’ has been batting for a very long time now, so with the impending BCCI elections, do you look forward to the ‘night watchman’ retiring?

Oh, 100 percent. When I called myself a ‘night watchman’ during that time, I saw myself and my colleagues trying to get the BCCI to accept the Constitution, as handed out by the court, conduct the elections and we would have quit. Would have taken us eight months, nine months at the most, not more than that. But unfortunately, there have been a lot of state associations and persons who were manning those associations, who did not see eye to eye with the Supreme Court.

Listen to the full interview here:

In the book you write extensively about the resistance you faced in the implementation of the Justice Lodha Committee recommendations. Looking at your tenure as the Chairman of the CoA, would you see it as a learning experience or a challenge?

Both, very much both. Learning experience from the point of view of the fact, the people who had been in the business of administering cricket in the country, either in the state associations or in the BCCI itself, despite having been in that role for 10-15 years, weren’t willing to leave. Normal corporate governance dictates that after nine years or ten years, you need to have a changeover, that’s good corporate governance. But these people felt that they were the only people who could administer cricket and they had the kind of experience which was best to administer cricket. Now obviously, the SC disagreed with them, and that was the interesting part. The challenge part of it was to convince state associations that here’s an order of the SC, we really have no option now. In the interest of administration of cricket passing into the hands of the younger people, newer people, fresh blood, and fresh thinking... That they should hand over the mantle to somebody else and move on. They could continue to be mentors, patrons etc, but the administration should not be done by them.

In your tenure as the CoA chairman, there were a lot of controversies that you had to take a look at, or make a decision on. Is there any one thing that you think could have been dealt with differently?

One problem that we faced was that the CoA, as initially appointed, had a four-member committee. For whatever reason, two members had to quit, so the CoA was left with only two members. Now, in any walk of life, in administration, in Parliament, when judges sit, quite often we have had divided judgements... Now, this was one case where perspectives seen by my colleague and me were different, so they were divergent. Now, having divergent views is not a problem, but unfortunately those divergent views played out in the public domain. That’s where, as you said, the controversy was created, but in handling the issues, I don’t think we would have done anything differently. I think in the last two years, Indian cricket performed exceedingly well.