BCCI treasury office moved; constitution goes online

Shashank Manohar has in his first act as the BCCI president shifted the treasury office from Chennai to Mumbai, and made the BCCI constitution available online on the board's official website, fulfilling one of the promises he made after taking charge.

Following the decision to move the treasury office to Mumbai, the BCCI has hired M/S Gokhale & Sathe, a Mumbai-based firm, as internal auditor, replacing PB Vijayaraghavan & Co. from Chennai, whose services have for long been engaged by the TNCA. The move, according to a BCCI press release, was "keeping in mind that all tax matters of the BCCI are with the Income Tax Office in Mumbai.".

"Basically, the president wants all the offices, all the documents of the BCCI to be available at one place," a BCCI official told ESPNcricinfo. Manohar had said soon after his election that the records would be made available at the board headquarters, "so that any member association or a representative of an association can inspect the records at any time".

The BCCI official said there would now be greater logistical convenience. "For example, our IT offices are in Mumbai, but every time there was something, the accounts, we had to get it from Chennai. He wants it [Mumbai] to be a proper headquarters where all sections of the board are working from the BCCI office," the official said.

The official, however, denied that the move was necessitated by the board's reported dissatisfaction at treasurer Anirudh Chaudhry conducting business from more than one office. "I don't think there is any point in debating on the fact. It's a non issue now," the official said. "In Delhi, he [Chaudhry] had opted for a room in a hotel for an office. That's all. Nothing more than that. Every office bearer has an office of his own. The secretary is operating from Delhi, the joint-secretary has a small office, the president will have a small office here. That's always the structure which was in the board."

One of Manohar's assurances after assuming office was to ensure transparency, and he had said that the problem could be resolved by "putting on the website of the board the constitution of the board, all the rules of the board, any expenditure made by the board over and above an amount of [Rs] 25 lakhs (approx. US$ 38,000), so that people are aware on what activities the board spends their money".

Manohar had sought to address the perception that something was "wrong in the board". "At the end of the year we can put the balance sheet of the board on the website, with the result it is available to the entire public at large so that there is transparency in the activities of the board," he had said at the press conference after his election as president.

The BCCI has subsequently uploaded a the 52-page constitution, titled Memorandum and Rules and Regulations, that was last revised on September 15, 2012.