AGARTALA, Feb 13 (TIWN): The final hearing of Tripura Cricket Association (TCA) case was scheduled to held on Monday, but the case was delayed as the petitioners sought some more time from the Court. High Court of Tripura on January set aside the election of Tripura Cricket Association (TCA) held on January 3 last, a day after the apex court removed Board for Control of Cricket in India (BCCI) President and Secretary for non-compiling the Lodha committee recommendations. Delivering the judgement Justice Subhashis Talapatra said that the process of holding executive committee meeting followed by election in the association was not legal. Following the High Court order Tripura Cricket Association will hold a meeting on Jan 24th about Committee making. All the aspirant and qualified candidates were asked to present in that meeting.

The TCA authority neither follows the recommendation of Lodha committee nor the direction of Supreme Court.In a writ petition TCA life member Satyendra Nath alleged that TCA had amended the constitution illegally and sent entire executive committee into cooling off without following the Lodha committee recommendation. 

According to norms, only office bearers of the executive committee was supposed to go for cooling off after third term but TCA present administration had sent entire 33 members committee to cool off misinterpreting the direction, Nath alleged in the court.

The executive committee of TCA has 14 sub-division committees, 14 clubs promoting cricket and five life members. None of the executive members were allowed by the association to contest in the election. The high court had issued stay on the election based on the petition filed by Nath. Despite communicating the court's direction, TCA held the election but the electoral officer former IAS of Tripura Kishore Ambuly did not announce the result."The election was held hurriedly when Supreme Court removed BCCI chief and asked functioning of the board as per the recommendation of Lodha committee. TCA administration was accused of large scale corruption and to prevent the exposure of the charges, they elected their followers to run the association for next term," Nath added.

 As sources said,   TCA is involved in deep corruption and fraudulent activities. With such corruption at the grass root level of sports, development in the name of sports is never possible.Sometimes TCA even used the name of Supreme Court and Lodha Committee in justifying corrupted deeds.

However, the case has remained unsolved yet and waiting for next hearing date.

It’s worthy to mention here that following allegations of corruption, match fixing and betting scandals in cricket in the country, the Supreme Court of India appointed a three-panel member led by Justice R M Lodha in January 2015 to look into the functioning of BCCI and suggest reforms. The Lodha Committee, in January 2016, released its list of reforms which had some major contentious points.