Fresh Bihar petition forces Supreme Court to postpone BCCI hearing

A fresh appeal by the Cricket Association of Bihar has put off Thursday's Supreme Court hearing on the validity of the Board of Control for Cricket in India's panel that investigated allegations of betting and spot-fixing during the Indian Premier League 2013. This new appeal is against a July 30 Bombay High Court verdict that said the BCCI had violated its own rules in formation of the commission investigating the owners of Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals.

In a fresh Special Leave Petition (SLP) filed on August 13, the Bihar association has contended the High Court could either have formed a new commission or monitored a fresh panel formed by the BCCI. "Essentially, we want the court to suggest an alternate mechanism of investigation to be fair to all parties," said a CAB official.

The CAB had dragged BCCI to the Bombay High Court soon after the Board's two-member probe panel consisting of former judges, gave a clean chit to Gurunath Meiyappan and Raj Kundra, owners of CSK and Royals, respectively. Gurunath is also the son-in-law of N. Srinivasan, the president-in-exile of the BCCI.

After the Bombay High Court rejected the BCCI probe panel for being "unconstitutional", the Board appealed to the Supreme Court. On August 7, the BCCI filed its own SLP against the High Court judgment. In its SLP, BCCI asked how the Bihar body's public interest petition could have been entertained when the Indian board was a private body. The two-judge bench of Justices AK Patnaik and Jagdish Singh Khehar had asked the CAB to file its reply by August 29.

Both SLPs will now be heard in the Supreme Court on Friday. Three of the country's top three lawyers - Harish Salve, Nalini Chidambaram and Indu Malhotra - are fronting the Bihar association.