BCCI ethics officer summons Kapil Dev and Anshuman Gaekwad for conflict hearing

Justice (retd) DK Jain, the BCCI's ethics officer, has asked Kapil Dev and Anshuman Gaekwad to appear before him for a hearing about their conflict of interest charges.

The complaint had been filed in August by Sanjeev Gupta, a life member of the Madhya Pradesh Cricket Association. ESPNcricinfo understands that Kapil's hearing is scheduled for December 27 and Gaekwad's a day later.

Both Kapil, the former India captain and coach, and Gaekwad, a former India opening batsman and coach, were part of the three-person BCCI Cricket Advisory Committee, formed on an ad-hoc basis to appoint the India men's team head coach. Also part of the panel was former India woman captain Shanta Rangaswamy. The CAC was authorised by the Committee of Administrators, which served as the BCCI's supervisory authority till October this year, to perform their duties and reappointed Ravi Shastri as the head coach in August.

However, Gupta had alleged that there were multiple cases of conflict with each of the three members. Consequently, Jain had asked the CAC members to respond to the charges levelled against them by October 10. Rangaswamy stepped down immediately and was soon followed by Kapil and Gaekwad, who, too, resigned from the CAC.

Before they convened to conduct the interviews for the Indian coaching staff, all three members of the CAC had submitted written undertakings to the BCCI: Kapil confirmed that he owns a company that supplies floodlights to various state associations and that he was one of the founding directors of the Indian Cricketers' Association (ICA); Gaekwad, similarly, mentioned his son's cricket academy and his directorship at ICA; Rangaswamy declared she was also initially an ICA director but had stepped down.

Subsequently, Gaekwad and Rangaswamy were elected as the two ICA representatives who would sit on the BCCI's nine-person Apex Council, and both attended the board's annual general meeting held in October.