Why BCCI not been made Public Authority Under RTI Act?: CIC

1. The Complainant sought information (1) whether Honourable Prime Minister/PMO is aware of dissatisfaction expressed by national hockey-players winning Asian Champions Trophy on just Rs 25000 award-money announced by Hockey lndia? (2) Is Honourable Prime Minister/PMO aware that Indian cricketers winning World Cup Final were given Rs. 2-crore award money by Board for Control of Cricket in India (BCCI) after cricketers felt dissatisfied on earlier announcement of Rs. one crore, that too in addition to bumper-awards by state-governments and others? (3) Complete and detailed information on action taken to remove such vast disparity in award-money for national players of cricket and others (4) Complete and detailed information on award-money paid to sports persons by Union government in last three years; (5) List of sports bodies (with addresses and names of office-beaters) registered with Union government; (6) Is it true that irregularities have been reported about some sports-bodices? (7) If yes, steps taken to action taken on such irregularities reported against sports bodies, and also to check any such probable irregularities in future. The RTI application was made to the CPIO of PMO, who vide letter dated 5-10-2011, transferred to the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports. However, no response whatsoever appears to have been given to the appellant by the said Ministry. He filed complaint before this Commission.

Decision :

2. In this complaint the crux of the issue was why the BCCI and its cricket administration was not made accountable. The complainant demanded the action on bringing the BCCI under RTI Act, as suggested by the Lodha Committee and Supreme Court in recent Bihar Cricket Association case. The CPIO Mr. Patro said that Government’s policy is to make every National Sports Federation a public authority under RTI Act and the BCCI is clearly declared as the National Sports Federation. Then the appellant asked why BCCI is not implementing the RTI and disclosing the information as per Section 4(1)(b) of RTI Act. He also contended that there is a huge disparity in giving reward money to the sportsman who won medals at Olympics and other prestigious international tournaments, and also disparity between Cricket and other sports. He said there is a huge competition between various governments headed by different political parties announcing reward money. If one government gives Rs 10 lakh, the other announces Rs 1 Crore. When cricketers winning world cup expressed dissatisfaction, their reward money was doubled to Rs 2 Crore. The political executive government is trying to give more to gain publicity of sports-encouraging raj without any concern for public money. He also asked why the BCCI is still using the logo designed by British Raj in 1928 which resembles 90 per cent the symbol of star of India given by British Raj to his loyal princes, as mentioned in the order of CIC in CIC/MOYAS/A/2017/116693 on 9.6.2017? Why the Government of India does not change it to truly Indian Symbol with either tricolor or four lions or Ashoka’s Dharm Chakra or any other logo decided by the Government of India?

3. Justice Mudgal Committee which was probing the IPL affairs in 2014 has highlighted in its report the need for enactment of a special legislation to declare all forms of manipulations of sports, corruption and malpractices a criminal The CPIO of the Ministry of Youth and Sports Affairs represented that draft legislation was revised under the title ‘The Prevention of Sports Fraud Bill, 2015 aiming at prevention of match fixing, spot fixing, manipulation of sports results, disclosure of insider information etc. The PMO has advised the department to re-examine whether sports frauds needs a standalone Act or it can be dealt with by making necessary provisions in the Indian Penal Code and to seek expert legal opinion on this. Accordingly the Ministry of Law was consulted on this issue. Beyond this the progress on this aspect is not known.

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