New Delhi Feb 03 :- Senior Bcci official Rajeev Shukla’s brother; a family member of Shukla’s one-time office assistant Akram Saifi; the son of an UP Cricket Association director; the son-in-law of a UPCA Apex Council member; and corporates linked to cricket in UP.
These are some of UPCA’s life members whose presence on the voting list for the February 13-15 by-elections to top posts in the state association has resulted in seven of UPCA’s 19 Apex Council members raising questions about propriety in a writ petition filed in the Allahabad High Court.
The writ describes the inclusion of these life members and corporate members as an attempt by long-serving UPCA officials to retain control over cricket in the country’s most populous state by “tampering”.
The members also allege that since only 41 of the 75 UP districts have state affiliation and are eligible to vote, extending voting rights to 24 new life members and five corporate members is a “strategic plan to change the electoral roll and the cricketing character of the cricket association”.
While UPCA officials defend the move by saying that the life members and their voting rights were approved by the state association before its previous polls in 2019, the petitioners question the manner in which these “new” members were added and have called for an “unbiased probe”.
Necessitated due to vacancies, by-elections for the posts of president, vice-president, secretary and two apex council slots will be decided by 41 district representatives, 50 life members and five corporate members. Among the new life members are two directors and a joint secretary of the UPCA.
Gautam Dutta, counsel for the petitioners, said: “The honourable division bench of the Allahabad High Court vide its order January 10, 2022, has issued notice to the BCCI, UPCA and the newly inducted life members and corporate members. The respondents have been directed to file counter affidavits on the issues raised in the writ petition.”
Rakesh Mishra, a UPCA Apex Council member and one of the writ petitioners, told The Indian Express: “There was no agenda placed before the Apex Council to induct new members, including corporate members. No discussion took place nor was any approval given. There has to be an unbiased probe into how the UPCA is being run and how family members of current and former officials were made life members.”
Mishra’s own son-in-law features on the list of new life members. “He wasn’t part of my family when he was made the member,” Mishra said.
Yudhvir Singh, a UPCA director, confirmed the inclusion of his son, and brothers of Shukla and Saifi, and other UPCA functionaries, as life members with voting rights.
“These members were added in 2018. There was an expression of interest, and a notice was issued. A screening committee vetted all the applications and gave their recommendations to the Board of Directors. Once this was done, the executive committee recommended the names at the Annual General Body Meeting in 2018 where it was ratified. Corporate members had to show a worth of Rs 500 crore,” he said.
“The names of these members were forwarded to the BCCI and its amicus curiae when UPCA updated its Constitution in 2019 as per the Lodha Committee recommendations. In (October) 2019, when UPCA elections were held, the election officer had approved the voters list which included these members,” he said.
However, a status report of the Committee of Administrators, which ran the BCCI for nearly three years till 2019-end on the Supreme Court’s orders, states the CoA was briefed that the last UPCA elections were “not fair”. “Affiliation granted only to 37 districts in place of 76 districts and has 31 life members. This was done in order to manoeuvre a favourable election result,” the report said. It said that “powerful individuals in control of UPCA misled” the CoA and “got the (state association’s) constitution approved”.
The writ also points to the growing influence of corporates in the state’s cricket. “A glance at the list of Members shown to have been inducted as Life Members, Corporate Members…shall reveal that family members from big corporate houses with huge money bags have been inducted both as Life Members and Corporate Members…,” it states.
The writ names JK Cement Private Limited, UFlex Group, Ekana Sportz City, Lohia Corp Limited and Montage Enterprises Pvt Ltd as the new corporate members. The JK Group has been a patron of the game in UP for several decades with a history of several members of the business family occupying important positions in the UPCA. Other corporate entities given UPCA membership also have been associated with cricket in the region.
The focus of the conflict of interest allegations is BCCI vice-president, UPCA veteran and Congress leader Shukla, who first became UPCA secretary and director in 2005. When the UPCA updated its Constitution to mirror that of the BCCI following the Justice R M Lodha Committee reforms, Shukla and two others were named “non-retiring directors”.
Shukla held the post of “non-retiring director for life” of the UPCA till December 2021, when he gave up directorship in the association. He did not respond to calls and messages but his brother Sudhir Shukla said he was associated with Kanpur cricket for four decades and had become a life member “on merit and not because of family connections”. “My work for cricket in the district speaks for itself,” he said.
The other new life members associated with UPCA officials and the new corporate members did not respond to calls and texts for comment.
