Show us you are not in conflict of interest, SC tells Srinivasan

New Delhi, Dec 1:

The Supreme Court Monday asked the side-stepped Indian cricket board president N. Srinivasan to show that he was not placed in a conflict of interest situation over the allegation of betting against his son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan who is an official of IPL franchise Chennai Super Kings (CSK), owned by India Cement Limited.

Srinivasan, besides being the president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), the country’s cricketing body, is also a member of the Indian Premier League (IPL) governing council and the vice-chairman and managing director of India Cement Limited.

“There is either conflict of interest or there is no conflict of interest. There is no third thing. Show us that there is no conflict of interest,” the apex court bench of Justice T.S. Thakur and Justice Fakkir Mohamed Ibrahim Kalifulla told senior counsel Kapil Sibal who appeared for Srinivasan.

“That we will examine,” Justice Kalifulla told Sibal as he sought to impress upon the court that the question of conflict of interest was not there and was not gone into by the Bombay High Court, the two-judge judicial committee appointed by the BCCI, and even the apex court-appointed Mudgal Committee which tendered its two reports in February and November 2014.

“The question of conflict of interest being there or not, whether the matter was addressed by the high court or not is no consequence,” court told Sibal.

It made it clear that it would go into the matter raised by the petitioner Cricket Association of Bihar (CAB), which has sought that Srinivasan stays away from contesting the election for the BCCI president and that IPL franchise Chennai Super Kings, owned by the India Cement Limited, be disqualified from the IPL. (IANS)