Soon after the Supreme Court order in January made it clear that N Srinivasan would virtually be ruled out of contesting the BCCI election, a couple of BCCI veterans had confided in private, "the moment you don't hold a post in BCCI, you find it very difficult to control the Board affairs from the outside". The release of the various BCCI sub-committees,  announced on Monday, five weeks after the BCCI's much-delayed AGM, appeared to indicate that Srinivasan's era at the BCCI was all but over.

Of the five committees that are extremely important in the BCCI administration, only one is headed by an official considered a part of the Srinivasan's group of loyalists. G Gangaraju of the Andhra Pradesh Cricket Association heads the tour, programme and fixture committee, merely a ceremonial appointment on account of him being a BCCI vice-president. Besides, Gangaraju is a member of parliament from the ruling BJP party currently in power in India, and also shares political allegiances with Anurag Thakur, the new BCCI secretary, who also belongs to the same party.

The other major sub-committees are headed either by officials known to be in Srinivasan's opposition - like Jyotiraditya Scindia (Madhya Pradesh Cricket Association) and Chetan Desai (Goa Cricket Association) - or those who fall somewhere in between the two camps - Rajiv Shukla and MP Pandove. Scindia and Desai head the finance and marketing committee, Shukla has returned as the IPL governing council chairman and Pandove has been reappointed as the National Cricket Academy Board chairman.

While Srinivasan loyalists still point to the fact that "almost half of the 25 BCCI sub-committees" were headed by the Srinivasan camp representatives, they also know that most of these were ceremonial posts.

Two of the key Srinivasan aides, Sanjay Patel and Ranjib Biswal who held the secretary and IPL chairman's post till the elections, do not feature in a single committee.

Patel's omission has a logical explanation: he had been expelled from his home unit of Baroda Cricket Association and the BCCI's many sub-committee berths are allocated on the basis of the member units themselves. Biswal, it is popularly believed, has suffered due to his loyalty with Srinivasan.

The appointment of the likes of Scindia, Desai and Ajay Shirke, chief of data management committee and an IPL governing council member, implied that Srinivasan had little say in the final composition of committees. Shirke's dramatic return after he had quit in objection to Srinivasan's handling of the 2013 IPL spot-fixing scandal was an indication of the turning tide.

A Dalmiya aide confirmed that the BCCI president and secretary finalised the committees after consulting all the factions. The sub-committee list also signified that Dalmiya and Thakur, in an attempt to give an impression that the BCCI had regained its original "democracy", have managed to keep virtually every member unit happy.

The is indicated by an increase in numbers in some of the already overloaded committees. The marketing committee, for instance had 26 members for 2013-14. In the new list, it has 29 members. Similarly, the IPL governing council, which had 10 members besides four BCCI office-bearers, has expanded to 12 members plus the four BCCI officials.