The Supreme Court on Monday refused to either advance the date of Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the BCCI or to restrain N Srinivasan from participating in it, while maintaining that it would wait for the Mudgal panel report over culpability of Srinivasan before issuing any orders.

A bench of Justices TS Thakur and FMI Kalifulla also turned down a plea by the Cricket Association of Bihar (CAB) to declare as illegal the continuance of BCCI office bearers due to the failure of the Board to hold its elections prior to September 30.

The court noted that the BCCI had postponed its AGM to November 20 after permission from the Registrar of Societies and hence no fault could be found at this juncture with either the deferment of the AGM or continuance of the existing working committee till a new dispensation is at place.

“If the real purpose of your application is to keep him (Srinivasan) out, wait for the probe committee to finish its inquiry and submit its report to us. Let the decks be cleared for a proper election. We had said in our order in 2013 that he is allowed to contest in the election but he cannot take charge till further orders. So let the committee now complete its probe and till then you keep quite,” the bench told CAB.

It observed that issues regarding the AGM were not to be adjudicated for the present since the scope of inquiry by the court related primarily to the allegations of spot-fixing and betting in the IPL-2013 and to ascertain whether any directives had to be issued in the wake of the panel’s final report.

As CAB’s counsel Nalini Chidambaram pressed for intervention, the court said that the question whether Srinivasan was entitled to contest or not as well whether he could take the charge as the BCCI President, if elected, could be determined only after the Mudgal panel’s report is submitted.

“You are filing the plea that don’t allow him (Srinivasan) to contest when the sword is hanging. Tomorrow if the committee exonerates him, is he not entitled to contest? But if there is an election in the meantime, what happens to his right to contest? It is better that you wait,” said the bench.

Matter adjourned

Meanwhile, senior advocate CA Sundaram told the court that the AGM had been deferred to November 20 with an anticipation that the Mudgal panel’s report would come in by November 10 – next date of hearing, and the members would hence be in a position to take informed decisions regarding the working committee to be elected.

The bench adjourned the matter for November 10 and asked the BCCI, Srinivasan and other parties to file their replies, if any, to the application by the CAB. The CAB, in its plea, had claimed that Srinivasan got members of BCCI to meet informally at Chennai on September 7 and himself attended the meeting as representative of Tamil Nadu Cricket Association. As per the CAB, he got them to agree that the AGM of the Board will not be held in September, 2014.

“BCCI is being run as a private fiefdom of Srinivasan and all the members of the BCCI act with herd mentality and seem to be acting at his behest to promote his interest and ensure that he has a total monopoly over the BCCI…,” the plea said.

The Court had on September 1 rejected Srinivasan’s plea for reinstatement as BCCI President and asked the panel to complete it’s investigation within two months. Justice Mudgal committee, which is conducting probe against Srinivasan and 12 prominent players in the scandal, had on August 29 filed its interim report as per the court’s order to conduct a thorough and complete investigation into the IPL-2013.