Maintainability of Jadeja's
petition to be decided first
The Delhi high court on Tuesday said it will first decide on an appeal by the Board of Control for Cricket in India against an earlier order on the maintainability of Ajay Jadeja's petition challenging the five-year ban imposed on him by the board.
A division bench, comprising Chief Justice S B Sinha and Justice A K Sikri, fixed the appeal to be heard on April 17, saying the BCCI had raised an important question regarding the status of the board, whether it was an instrument of the state or not, and whether it was discharging the functions of the state or not.
The board had come up in appeal against Justice Mukul Mudgal's September 17, 2001, order overruling the preliminary objections of the BCCI over the maintainability of Jadeja's petition.
Jadeja's petition against the ban on him in the wake of the match-fixing allegations would now also be heard by the bench after deciding the maintainability issue.
The petition was earlier being heard by Justice Manmohan Sarin, who on March 1 had fixed the matter for April 17 for final disposal.
Saying the BCCI would be given no further extension in the matter, the judge had told the board to file its reply if any on the merits of the case within two weeks. He also asked both parties to file short synopsis on their respective stands.
The Chief Justice's bench in the meanwhile was to decide the maintainability aspect by March 15 but then the matter was adjourned till July 22. The BCCI today moved an application seeking that the maintianability issue should be sorted out before the main petition was taken up.
Counsel for Jadeja, Vineet Malhotra, however, alleged that the BCCI is using delaying tactics and trying to hoodwink the court by somehow not allowing arguments on the main petition. The board has still not filed its written reply on merits of the case, he claimed.
If even the main petition is heard by the division bench, it would deny one of the parties one stage of appeal, he added.
The bench would also hear another petition, in which the status of the board is in question. In that petition, advocate Rahul Mehra has sought independent investigation into the BCCI functioning and accounts of the past few years.
