BCA poll row: HC asks current body to continue as caretaker till verdict on March 5

Ahmedabad: The Gujarat high court on Wednesday reserved its verdict until March 5 on the challenge to the candidature of some senior office bearers, including former cricketer Kiran More, in the Baroda Cricket Association's elections. It however, asked the existing body to continue to discharge routine work until then in order to avoid an "administrative vacuum".The tenure of BCA's existing body is getting over on Feb 19. The elections for the new body and councillors were conducted on Feb 15, but the HC stayed the counting of votes. Since the election outcome was not to be announced until the final verdict of the court, the HC was requested to resolve the issue of the association's functioning until then.
Justice Niral Mehta clarified, "The tenure of the existing body shall be treated as coming to an end on its scheduled date and shall not be deemed to be extended by virtue of this order. However, in order to ensure that there is no administrative vacuum, the present office bearers shall continue only as a caretaker body until a newly elected body assumes the charge."However, the HC asked the caretaker body to restrict itself strictly to routine and day-to-day administration and ordered it not to "take any major policy decision; incur non-routine or substantial financial expenditure; make any appointments, selection or contractual engagement of long-term nature; and alter membership structure".The HC further clarified that all the decisions taken by the caretaker body would remain subject to the final outcome of the main proceedings.The petition was filed by two BCA members, Pradeepsinh Solanki and Ramchandra Prajapati, for enforcement of Supreme Court guidelines, which disqualify individuals who completed a cumulative nine-year tenure as office-bearer and/or councillor in a state association and mandate a thee-year cooling-off period after two consecutive terms. They challenged the candidature of Kiran More, Amul Jikar, Ananat Indulkar and Amar Petiwale for different posts, citing SC guidelines.