Odisha High Court Case Exposes Governance Crisis in Indian Cricket
New Delhi: A legal skirmish in the Odisha High Court has dragged Indian cricket into fresh uncertainty, exposing a fault line between the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), its state units, and the country’s new sports law.
At the heart of it is a simple question with complicated consequences: who really governs Indian cricket right now?
BCCI draws a line in Odisha case
In an affidavit filed in the Odisha High Court in a matter related to the Odisha Cricket Association’s (OCA) elections, the BCCI has taken a firm position. The board’s legal team, acting on the authority of secretary Devajit Saikia, has argued that OCA must hold its elections strictly under the existing BCCI constitution, amended in 2019 after the Lodha Committee’s recommendations.
The key assertion is blunt. Cricket, the affidavit states, is not a “designated sport” under the National Sports Governance Act, 2025. If it is not designated, the Act does not apply. If the Act does not apply, the National Sports Board (NSB) has no say in how cricket is run.
That stance runs straight into the path of what many state associations believed.
State units caught in the crossfire
Several state bodies had been operating under a different assumption. After a sports ministry notice issued last December, they believed fresh elections could be deferred until December 2026. Plans were quietly being drawn up with that timeline in mind.
The OCA has sided with the government advisory. Its current office-bearers have claimed they are simply following the Centre’s directions. The BCCI, through its affidavit, has effectively told them that is not good enough.
The flashpoint is the cooling-off period for office-bearers.
Under the BCCI’s Lodha-era constitution, no office-bearer can continue for more than two consecutive terms. The National Sports Governance Act, by contrast, does not prescribe any cooling-off period and eases certain conflict-of-interest norms. For those who favour continuity and entrenched leadership, the Act is far more forgiving.
The BCCI affidavit stresses that OCA’s own rules mirror the two-term cap and insists that elections must be held on time “to avoid continuation of any person for more than two terms consecutively” and to uphold “the spirit” of the Supreme Court judgment that underpinned the Lodha reforms.
The next hearing in the case is scheduled for September 1. By then, the unease among state units may have only grown.
Parliament praise, courtroom pushback
The clash is all the more striking because, in Parliament, the mood had once seemed harmonious.
During a discussion on the bill in August 2025, Vijayawada MP and Andhra Cricket Association president Kesineni Sivanath welcomed the legislation. He told the House that the BCCI already followed its core principles. It was also pointed out that the government had spared the BCCI from the ambit of the Right to Information (RTI) Act because the board does not depend on public funds.
That exemption was reinforced in May, when the Central Information Commission ruled that the Lodha Committee’s recommendations were “advisory in nature” while exempting BCCI from RTI.
On paper, then, the government praised the board’s governance model, accepted its financial independence, and carved it out of RTI. On the ground, the BCCI is now using the lack of “designated sport” status to keep the new sports law at arm’s length.
The result is a fog of ambiguity.
Power, continuity and a split rulebook
Inside the board, the latest move has unsettled many.
“If the government has notified that sports bodies can defer elections till December 2026, every state unit would believe it can wait until then before holding elections for select posts,” a senior official told TOI. That expectation, he suggested, sits uneasily with the BCCI’s sudden insistence on immediate polls in Odisha.
For years, the most influential voices in Indian cricket administration have argued for continuity. Long-serving officials, steady hands, familiar faces. The Lodha-era cooling-off rules were designed to break that pattern; the National Sports Governance Act, by omitting such a provision, effectively restores it for most sports bodies.
The BCCI is now trying to live in two worlds at once: defending its own constitution and its term limits in court, while resisting the overarching authority of the NSB and the new Act.
The official’s concern cuts to the core: “It has also created confusion over the governance of the sport. The state bodies need to know if they have to follow the Sports Governance Act or the BCCI constitution.”
For now, they are stuck between a government advisory and a powerful board that does not want to be bound by it.
High stakes for the boardroom
The timing is not incidental.
The BCCI held its own elections last September, before the sports ministry issued its advisory on deferring polls. That cycle is already in motion. Vice-president Rajiv Shukla will complete six years in office next year. Secretary Devajit Saikia is into his second term and will hit the six-year mark in 2028, at which point, under the BCCI constitution, he must step aside for a cooling-off period.
If cricket is eventually brought under the NSB’s umbrella and the National Sports Governance Act fully applies, those cooling-off rules would no longer be mandatory for BCCI office-bearers. Term limits would soften. Careers in the corridors of power could stretch longer.
That possibility hangs over every legal filing and every state association meeting.
The Odisha case, on the face of it, is about one state body’s election schedule. In reality, it is shaping into a test of who gets to write the rules for Indian cricket’s future: Parliament and the NSB, or a board determined to guard its autonomy and its constitution, line by line.
