Justice Lodha Committee and BCCI Reforms

In 2015, the Supreme Court took the unusual step of reforming how India runs its most powerful sport. The trigger was the 2013 IPL spot-fixing scandal. The tool was a committee led by a former Chief Justice, Justice R.M. Lodha. Its recommendations reshaped the BCCI‘s governance rules, and they are still being fought over today.

MCQ Questions

Justice Lodha Committee

2015

Supreme Court-appointed committee on BCCI reform

Chaired by former Chief Justice of India R.M. Lodha.

Key Reform

One State, One Vote

Maharashtra and Gujarat‘s 3 units share rotational voting.

Age Cap

70 Years

Upper age limit for cricket administrators, upheld by the SC.

SC Order

18 July 2016

Most recommendations accepted; BCCI given 6 months to comply.

Oversight Body

4-Member CoA

Appointed 30 Jan 2017, led by ex-CAG Vinod Rai.

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Contents

• 1Must Know
• 2Good to Know
• 3Test Yourself
• 4Great to Know

Must Know

• The Supreme Court appointed the Lodha Committee on 23 January 2015. It followed the 2013 IPL spot-fixing and betting scandal, and an earlier probe by the Justice Mukul Mudgal Committee.
• The Committee, chaired by former Chief Justice of India R.M. Lodha, submitted its report on 14 July 2015.
• On 18 July 2016, the Supreme Court accepted most of the recommendations. It gave the BCCI six months to implement them.
• A central reform was “One State, One Vote.” Maharashtra and Gujarat, which each had three cricket associations, kept their associations but had to share voting rights on a rotational basis.
• The Court upheld an age cap of 70 years for cricket administrators, and barred sitting government ministers or government servants from holding office in cricket bodies.

Good to Know

• The Committee’s original proposal allowed only one three-year term before a mandatory cooling-off period. The Supreme Court’s final order relaxed this, allowing two consecutive three-year terms before cooling off.
• BCCI resisted implementing the reforms for months. On 30 January 2017, the Supreme Court appointed a four-member Committee of Administrators (CoA) to run the BCCI directly and enforce compliance.
• The CoA was led by former Comptroller and Auditor General Vinod Rai. Its other members were historian Ramachandra Guha, former India women’s cricket captain Diana Edulji, and IDFC’s Vikram Limaye.
• The chain of events traced back further, to the Justice Mukul Mudgal Committee’s investigation into the 2013 scandal. It named individuals for conflict of interest, including Gurunath Meiyappan, son-in-law of then-BCCI president N. Srinivasan.

Test Yourself

Please wait…

1. The Supreme Court appointed the Justice Lodha Committee on 23 January 2015, chaired by which former Chief Justice of India?

R.M. Lodha

Mukul Mudgal

P. Sathasivam

Dipak Misra

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Great to Know

• The Supreme Court’s power to order these reforms is easy to misread. In Zee Telefilms Ltd. v. Union of India (2005), the Court had already ruled, 3:2, that the BCCI is not “State” under Article 12. That ruling still stands.
• What changed was a different route: BCCI performs public functions, like picking the national team, so it remains answerable to writ jurisdiction under Article 226. That public-function logic, not “State” status, is what let the courts reshape its governance.
• Even a Supreme Court order proved hard to enforce cleanly. Ramachandra Guha resigned from the CoA in 2017, citing continued resistance and conflicts of interest inside Indian cricket administration.
• The “one state, one vote” rule stayed contested well past the 2016 order. By 2018, the Supreme Court itself signalled it was open to revisiting that specific rule, showing how governance reform in India often keeps evolving even after a final-sounding judgment.