New Delhi: Indian cricket has walked into yet another governance storm, and this time the flashpoint is Bhubaneswar.
An ongoing case in the Odisha High Court over the Odisha Cricket Association (OCA) elections has exposed a sharp fault line between the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), the central government’s new sports law, and confused state units caught in the middle.
BCCI digs in over its own rules
In an affidavit filed before the court and authorised by BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia, the board has made its position clear: OCA must hold its elections under the existing BCCI constitution, the one reshaped in 2019 after the Lodha Committee’s recommendations.
At the heart of the argument lies a single, pointed claim from the BCCI’s legal team — cricket, they say, 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.
The message is unmistakable. The BCCI wants its own rulebook to prevail.
The affidavit stresses that OCA’s constitution already mirrors a key Lodha-era reform: no office-bearer can continue for more than two consecutive terms. On that basis, the BCCI has pressed for “timely elections” in Odisha to prevent any individual from breaching that limit and, as the affidavit puts it, “to uphold the spirit of the judgment of the Hon’ble Supreme Court.”
The court will hear the matter next on September 1. By then, the ripples from this case may have spread far beyond Odisha.
State units stuck between Delhi and Mumbai
Across the country, state associations are staring at a legal maze.
Many believed they had breathing space after the sports ministry’s notice issued last December, which said sports bodies could defer fresh elections until December 2026. Several units had begun planning accordingly, assuming the National Sports Governance Act would override older frameworks.
Now the BCCI’s stand has thrown those plans into doubt.
“The state bodies need to know if they have to follow the Sports Governance Act or the BCCI constitution,” a senior official told TOI, capturing the uncertainty in one line.
The biggest flashpoint is the cooling-off period for office-bearers. The BCCI constitution, following Lodha, insists on mandatory breaks after fixed tenures to prevent entrenched power centres. The National Sports Governance Act does not lay down any such cooling-off requirement and eases some conflict-of-interest provisions as well.
That contrast cuts to the core of how Indian sport is administered. For state officials, the question is brutally simple: do they obey the government’s more relaxed framework or the board’s stricter, court-tested rules?
In Odisha, the clash is already open. Incumbent OCA office-bearers argue they are following government directions and the ministry’s advisory on elections. The BCCI has taken the opposite line and pushed for adherence to its own constitution.
Political backing, legal grey zones
The tension is not playing out in isolation.
When Parliament debated the National Sports Governance Act in August 2025, Vijayawada MP and Andhra Cricket Association president Kesineni Sivanath had welcomed the bill. He also underlined that the BCCI already followed its core principles. During that discussion, the government clarified that the BCCI had been kept outside the ambit of the Right to Information (RTI) Act because it did not rely on public funds.
That exemption was reinforced in May this year when the Central Information Commission, while ruling that the RTI Act would not apply to the BCCI, described the Lodha Committee recommendations as “advisory in nature.”
Those two words have now taken on fresh weight. If Lodha is only advisory, and if the new Act does not formally cover cricket, the BCCI has room to argue that it alone decides which reforms to retain, and how strictly to apply them.
Yet the board’s current posture has unsettled many within its own ecosystem.
“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,” the senior official pointed out. The BCCI’s power brokers, he added, have long championed continuity in administration, arguing that stable leadership is vital as new office-bearers grow into their roles.
Now, by challenging the applicability of the government’s directive, the board risks disrupting that very continuity.
High stakes for the BCCI’s own hierarchy
This is not an abstract governance debate. The consequences could land at the BCCI’s own doorstep.
The board held its elections last September, a few months before the sports ministry issued its advisory on deferring polls. Under the current BCCI constitution, vice-president Rajiv Shukla will complete six years in office next year. Secretary Devajit Saikia, now in his second term as an office-bearer, is slated to hit the six-year mark in 2028, after which he must enter a cooling-off period as per the Lodha-based rules.
Those timelines matter. If cricket is eventually brought under the NSB’s umbrella and the National Sports Governance Act fully applies, the mandatory cooling-off period embedded in the BCCI constitution would no longer be binding on its office-bearers. The very reform that once threatened to upend long-running regimes would be neutralised by a newer, more permissive law.
For now, the BCCI is arguing the opposite — that the Act does not touch cricket at all. Yet that stance, aimed at protecting its autonomy, could end up forcing a sharper, more public reckoning over who really governs the sport.
All eyes now turn to the Odisha High Court and, beyond it, to how long Indian cricket can continue to operate in this grey zone between its own constitution and the country’s new sports law.
