The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) should be brought under the ambit of the information law, the Law Commission said, noting that it falls under the definition of a public authority.
The commission rejected the argument that the cricket Board was a ‘private body’.
It said non-consideration of the role played by the BCCI as monopolistic in regulation of the game of cricket has resulted in the board "flying under the radar of public scrutiny, encouraged an environment of opacity and non-accountability".
In July 2016, the Supreme Court had asked the commission to recommend whether the cricket board can be brought under the Right to Information Act.
The report, submitted to the Law Ministry today, states that BCCI ought to be classified as 'state' within the meaning of Article 12 of the Constitution.
In January this year, the Law Commission chairman Justice B.S. Chauhan, had called for the BCCI to be brought under the act. “BCCI should be under the RTI Act. They get a lot of government grants in terms of tax exemptions and land at concessional costs from the public exchequer,” he had said.
There have been calls to bring the BCCI under the RTI ambit, earlier, too. The Justice R.M. Lodha panel and Justice Mukul Mudgal, who headed the panel that investigated the spot-fixing controversy in the 2013 Indian Premier League, had made the same recommendation.
The Central Information Commission, too, had urged the Committee of Administrators (CoA) to bring the organisation under the RTI Act.
(With PTI inputs)