JKCA members demand chairman's removal
Members of the Jammu and Kashmir Cricket Association working committee have called for the resignation of the current chairman, Muhammad Aslam Goni, and for fresh elections to be held by the end of next month in the wake of alleged financial scam that was uncovered earlier this month.
Members of the Jammu and Kashmir Cricket Association working committee have called for the resignation of the current chairman, Muhammad Aslam Goni, and for fresh elections to be held by the end of next month in the wake of alleged financial scam that was uncovered earlier this month.
On March 10 the police registered a case filed by association chairman Muhammad Aslam Goni against general secretary - and former treasurer - Ahsan Mirza and chief administrative officer Mohammad Saleem Khan for allegedly opening and operating bogus association bank accounts into which money received from the BCCI had been siphoned off.
On Wednesday, a substantial majority of the 62 working committee members of the JKCA demanded that Goni resign. "He has mismanaged the affairs of the association and is even misleading [association president] Farooq Abdullah," Mehboob Iqbal, a former chairman of the association said. We demand stern action against those office bearers against whom the association has lodged an FIR against."
Coupled with the chairman's removal, the members also demanded that the existing management committee be dissolved and new elections held so that an independent inquiry into the alleged scam could be held. However, while some of the members wanted India's investigative agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation, to examine the case, others preferred an internal inquiry into the matter.
Abdullah, who is also the chairman of the BCCI's marketing sub-committee and a member of the country's central government, had been dragged into the dispute when the Jammu & Kashmir bank produced a document showing he had authorised a loan worth Rs 1.91 crores to Mirza in 2008. While Abdullah confirmed to a news channel on March 12 that a case has been filed, he claimed that the money transferred to Mirza's account was to repay the money Mirza had lent the association when the court had frozen its accounts back in 2006.
The police have raided the houses of Mirza and Khan in Srinagar and have also seized the bank accounts allegedly opened by the pair. Meanwhile the chairman of the Jammu & Kashmir Bank has said that they are examining the opening of bogus accounts and the subsequent withdrawals of cash as well.