Justice Lodha urges state associations to be transparent

BENGALURU: Former Chief Justice RM Lodha has said that state cricket associations could take a big step towards transparency by making public the revenue earned from sale of tickets and allotment of complimentary passes.
Dubbing the culture of passes as an “easy method to oblige people who matter“, Lodha observed that while eradicating this practice ought to be the goal of every state association, revealing the true picture about distribution of tickets and passes on its website will signal a “good beginning“ towards a transparent administration.
“Let us remember that complimentary passes reduce the availability of tickets to the public and revenue from their sale. It instead goes to friends, government department and others. A lot of them get these free passes.There is no account of where these go, no disclosures and facts are not brought to public domain,“ Lodha told TOI.
“With RTI not being applicable here, associations must take the initiative to inform the public about distribution of passes, the categories of people who got them and revenues from ticket sales,” Lodha said.
Chinnaswamy stadium has a capacity of around 32,000 but for the recent T20 match between India and England, a little over 15,000 tickets were sold online and over the counter. The rest apparently went as tickets or complimentaries to members, clubs and others.
“We all know that complimentary passes are a largesse by the cricket association concerned, given as entitlement to certain sections of society . Our committee has mentioned in its report that this has to be prevented and steps must be taken to ensure that tickets to cricket matches are widely available to the public at reasonable rates.“ Lodha also pointed to the questions his committee had raised to BCCI: “What is the basis of free tickets and passes being given for games? What proportions of tickets are available to the general public and how is that transparently ensured? What is the policy for giving tickets and passes to governmental and statutory authorities? We have also specified that the ombudsman must redress grievances of the public concerning ticketing.”