On July 27, a day after the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) held its Special General Body Meeting (SGM) in New Delhi, the Committee of Administrators (CoA) sent all three existing officebearers a show-cause notice. Acting president C.K. Khanna, acting secretary Amitabh Choudhary and treasurer Anirudh Chowdhry were asked to explain why each one of them violated the CoA directives. The deadline to send in their explanation was set for July 31, 2017.
The CoA brought to the attention of all three a directive issued by it, which clearly stated that the CEO was entitled to be present at any such meeting. It further stated that "not allowing the BCCI CEO to attend the SGM was a clear violation of its directions".
It further added that the July 24 order of the Supreme Court had only prohibited persons other than officebearers of the member associations from attending the SGM, as nominees or representatives.
All three officebearers responded to the email on last day of the deadline—July 31. All three stated that BCCI CEO Rahul Johri left on his own after some members raised objections. All three said that neither Johri nor the legal team raised objections to the same. The BCCI lawyers left without protest. Even hotel staff was asked to leave. All three stated that there was no intent to disobey the SC order.
Khanna, meanwhile, passed the buck to acting secretary Choudhary, saying that the meeting was convened by him. He also added that his opinion was not sought on the issue.
Treasurer Anirudh Chowdhry too stated that he had conducted the meeting, but he was not, at any point, asked for any opinion or impact of the order regarding attendance. He also stated as treasurer, he had no authority "to tender any decision regarding attendance of any individual in general meeting".
The CoA on August 8 then sent a response to the three explanations provided. It pointed out that in the audio recording of the SGM, the acting secretary is heard saying, "let all staff also go from here....kitchen staff also”. The CoA points out in its email to the trio that it was clear that everyone other than members were “asked to leave”. It also said that the BCCI officebearers did not seek the opinion of the legal team present. It ended by saying it was not satisfied with the explanations of the three officebearers.
Pointing to the correspondence between CoA and officebearers, the CoA says in its status report, "either the officebearers are themselves not in agreement on what transpired at the SGM or they are acting out a charade in order to avoid communicating the decisions taken at the said SGM to the CoA....In either situation, the conduct of the officebearers is such as to demonstrate that they are unfit to continue and ought to be removed.”
