CHENNAI: What was expected to be a smooth ride for N Srinivasan after the emergent working committee meet where the president-in-exile was given a clean chit, suffered a big blow after Monday’s Supreme Court observations.
In fact the same members who seemed convinced on November 18 that Srinivasan was clean seemed a little circumspect after the Supreme Court’s observations. After learning that the country’s apex court has come down heavily on the Tamil Nadu strongman, one of the members even doubted if he would be allowed by the court to contest the elections.
When the emergent working committee meet was held last week in Chennai, almost all the members decided to support Srinivasan after going through the summary of the Mudgal Committee’s report that was made public.
The working committee claimed Srinivasan had done no wrong and it was unfair to keep him away from the president’s post. “He has been cleared of betting and match-fixing charges,” they had argued last week.
But on Monday after the court proceeding a top BCCI functionary told TNIE that things look grim. “It doesn’t look good for Srinivasan especially the way the court observed but we are hopeful something positive would come out of our argument as well,” said the functionary. ”It is only the second day of the hearing and there is always time for us to press our point, which will, most likely, be on Tuesday. Srinivasan has been a tough person since the scandal broke and we are sure he will come out clean on this issue as well.”
Since the court clearly stated that BCCI ‘was just assuming’ that the report has given a clean chit things don’t seem too rosy for the BCCI supremo. Though the conflict of interest issue has reared its head again, Srinivasan’s camp still believes this can be argued in his favour. “Look, the issue of conflict of interest is already been discussed and it has been concluded that he didn’t break any constitution of the board. The board allowed him to buy the franchise and only then he went ahead and bought one. So we will bring this to the court’s notice as well. It is not right for us to comment more on this as the matter is before the Supreme Court,” said another board official on condition of anonymity.
For the faction that doesn’t support Srinivasn, their plan to not rake up this issue at the working committee meeting turned to be a masterstroke. As reported by this newspaper, some members had knew about this but decided to wait for the apex court to deliver their observations.
“This was the reason why some members didn’t raise our objection. If we had done so, then they would have found a way around it. But they can’t do the same before the court. It is there for the juddes to see and I’m sure it definitely puts everyone including the board in a spot,” said a board official.