New Delhi , April 21: Plans to oust Lalit Modi may be in the final stages as far as the Board of Control for Cricket in India is concerned, but the IPL commissioner has been digging up some clauses that have the potential to a throw a spanner in the works.
Instead of gathering support for the IPL governing council meeting scheduled in Mumbai for April 26, where his future as the league’s boss will be put to a vote, Mr Modi has changed tack, now calling the meeting “unauthorised”.
The meeting had been convened by BCCI secretary and Chennai Super Kings owner N. Srinivsan, a Modi detractor for long. The latter, however, cited the rule book, saying that as the council chairman only he had the right to summon such a meeting.

“He (Srinivasan) is an ex-officio member of the GC as an office-bearer of the BCCI and as he is a conflicted party who owns an IPL team he has never and can never call a GC meeting,” Mr Modi said in an email to BCCI president Shashank Manohar on Wednesday.
Mr Modi made it clear that he was not against the meeting per se, but if it had to happen, it would be as per his convenience. He said he was not made aware that the GC meet would be called at such short notice. “If the meeting does take place on April 26, instead of May 1 as I have asked, it will be deemed to be unofficial,” he said in the email, a copy of which was sent to all the franchise owners, including Mr Srinivasan.
“I have just returned from Dubai last night and was attending the ICC meeting which you asked me to attend on your behalf,” he said, adding the IPL had to move matches from Bengaluru and arrange the play-offs and awards.
Mr Modi will have to step down if the 14-member governing council passes a resolution to that effect by at least a two-thirds majority. However, if he manages to get the meeting annulled, it would be a massive victory for him at a time when everything seems to be going downhill ever since he questioned the shareholding pattern of the Kochi franchise on his Twitter page a week ago.
Mr Srinivasan on Wednesday told this newspaper that a GC meeting could be called “if a majority of members felt that they needed to discuss a matter of grave importance”.
“It’s a democracy, we have a collective right to question things,” he added.
A board administrator, however, said that Mr Modi’s argument was watertight. “The rules say that only the BCCI president or the respective head of the sub-divisional body of the board can convene a governing council meeting. Other members do not have the right.”
Even if Mr Modi manages to wriggle out of the April 26 meeting, the board is contemplating Plan B. Insiders claim that former BCCI president Sharad Pawar and Shashank Manohar will initiate an internal inquiry against Mr Modi if the decision does not go in the former’s favour.
Mr Modi’s defence is, however, not just based on the legality of Monday’s meeting, but also on the argument that all the decisions taken by GC were taken collectively, and not by the commissioner alone.
The seriousness with which the government views the IPL controversy became apparent when senior BCCI official Rajiv Shukla met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday. Mr Shukla refused to say what had been discussed in his meeting with the Prime Minister but he did tell reporters that the Indian cricket board would not hesitate to take “drastic” steps. “The question of people refusing to back down or not, they don’t matter. After the meeting between BCCI president Shashank Manohar and Sharad Pawar yesterday, it has been decided that in the April 26 governing council meeting we will sit together and unanimously decide what to do,” Mr Shukla said.
“These decisions would in the interest of cricket and the BCCI. No matter how harsh they might seem, decisions would be taken to protect the BCCI and cricket’s image in the country. We have never compromised on our image in the past 60 years and there will be no compromise this time too,” he added.
Corporate affairs minister Salman Khurshid said, “We cannot just shut our eyes ... We are doing our own due diligence. Records are available with us and we are going through the records. Frankly, whatever is thrown up by the investigations of the finance ministry... We will do what is required to be done.”

Sunit Kaul