Deepankar Sharda
Chandigarh, October 7
All is not well in the Punjab Cricket Association (PCA). Former India cricketer Harbhajan Singh, who is the PCA’s chief advisor, has accused the current PCA administrators, including the president, of “illegal activities”.
In a letter to the PCA members, Harbhajan, who is a Rajya Sabha MP, said that he received “numerous complaints” in the last 10 days.
For the last week or 10 days, I have been receiving numerous complaints from cricket lovers in Punjab and several stakeholders that the PCA under the present president is resorting to a lot of illegal activities. The crux of the matter is that PCA is trying hard to induct around 150 members with voting rights to tilt the balance in their favour. Harbhajan Singh in a letter
Since the matter is under consideration of the ombudsman, it will not be appropriate for me to issue any statementRs Gulzarinder Chahal, PCA President
“For the last week or 10 days, I have been receiving numerous complaints from cricket lovers in Punjab and several stakeholders that the PCA under the present president is resorting to a lot of illegal activities,” Harbhajan said in the letter.
The letter comes a day after a few PCA office-bearers lodged a complaint with the PCA ombudsman. “The crux of the matter is that PCA is trying hard to induct around 150 members with voting rights to tilt the balance in their favour. These are against the BCCI constitution, guidelines of the PCA and the violation of transparency and ethical norms in administration of sports bodies,” he added.
“To hide their illegal activities, they are not organizing formal meetings of the PCA, and are taking all the decisions suo moto which serve their selfish motives,” he added.
Complaint
Yesterday, PCA honorary secretary Dilsher Khanna, honorary joint secretary Surjit Rai and two apex council members filed a complaint with the PCA ombudsman-cum-ethics officer. In the letter, they accused PCA president Gulzarinder Singh Chahal of granting life memberships to his close associates without following due procedure.
“The life membership committee constituted by Chahal consists of five members, out of which four are not life members themselves. This includes the president himself,” the letter to the ombudsman said.
“The committee didn’t hold any meeting in PCA. However, the meeting seems to be happening in a very clandestine manner at Chahal’s residence. Also, the president didn’t clarify the criteria for granting life membership and Chahal deliberately kept the honorary secretary and joint secretary out of this committee,” it added.
Interestingly, on October 4, Chahal faced allegations of conflict of interest. A district unit chief filed a complaint claiming that the firm that looks after the PCA president’s business interests has been appointed to do the auditing work for the association.
Hailing from Patiala, the 39-year-old Chahal is the youngest PCA president till date. He had succeeded industrialist Rajinder Gupta.
