The court's order on Tuesday puts a big question mark over the panel's report, which gave a clean chit to Board president N Srinivasan's Chennai Super Kings, his son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan, Rajasthan Royals and its co-owner Raj Kundra.
Rejecting BCCI's contention that it could not be taken to court on an IPL-related issue, the HC bench said the issue was within the court's jurisdiction and in the "larger public interest" and that the cricket board was "answerable". It also refused to grant the BCCI a stay on its order.
The BCCI had said on May 28 that its five-member disciplinary committee had picked a probe panel comprising two retired high court judges, T Jayaram Chouta and R Balasubramanian. It was set up before Srinivasan "stepped aside" as board president on June 2. Its task was to probe betting and spot-fixing charges following Meiyappan's arrest by Mumbai police for placing bets on IPL matches.
During court hearings, it was pointed out that BCCI rules mandate at least one member from the board and as many outsiders on an inquiry committee. In May, the board appointed a three-member panel, but when its office bearer Sanjay Jagdale resigned, it carried on with just the retired judges.
A bench of Justices Shiavax Vazifdar and MS Sonak said on Tuesday, "The constitution of the probe panel is illegal and unconstitutional."
The court was hearing a public interest litigation filed by the Cricket Association of Bihar (CAB) and its secretary Aditya Verma. The petition challenged the probe panel's sanctity and sought directions to have it recalled. It also asked that the high court set up a fresh probe committee (comprising ex-judges) and suspension of CSK's franchise agreement.
Aside from holding the probe panel's constitution illegal, the court did not grant the petitioner any relief. Reading out the operative part of the court order, Justice Vazifdar declined to form a new panel and said, "It is the BCCI's prerogative to form a new panel and order fresh investigations." The court did however declare that while "the BCCI is a private body, it is answerable."
While the order's written copy was not available on Tuesday, the court said its finding was based "in view of the submissions". One of these was that the panel had completed its inquiry after one preliminary hearing and after getting statements in writing from the concerned parties.
BCCI's senior counsel Raju Subramanian asked that the court stay its order. But Birendra Saraf, counsel for CAB, opposed a stay saying, "The board wants to ratify the panel's report." The high court granted no stay.
In the litigation, the petitioner alleged that the BCCI "panel was constituted arbitrarily to cover up allegations" against Meiyyapan and accused Srinivasan of exercising "blatant bias".
In response, the BCCI attacked the PIL as being without locus, motivated and in private interest. "No writ can be filed in a high court against BCCI so far as it relates to IPL since IPL is purely a commercial venture of the board." The board contended that it "complied with all the rules", that all operational rules were followed while setting up the panel and that there were no grounds for the court to interfere.
But the court appeared to accept the stand of the Bihar cricket body's lawyers—Virendra Tulzapurkar, Saraf and Ameet Naik—that the issue was within the court's jurisdiction and in the "larger public interest". Tulzapurkar said Srinivasan was involved in the committee's constitution and contended that the BCCI had not provided the minutes of any meeting for forming the panel.
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