SC agrees to hear Swamy’s plea on CSK’s IPL ban

The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to hear a plea of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Subramanian Swamy challenging Justice Lodha Committee’s order suspending the IPL franchisee, Chennai Super Kings (CSK), for two years over the 2013 betting scam involving its top official Gurunath Meiyappan.

A bench comprising Chief Justice T S Thakur and Justice U U Lalit said that it will fix a date for hearing the plea of Swamy in which he has also sought a CBI probe into the petition filed before the apex court by Cricket Association of Bihar (CAB).

“A fraud has been committed on this court as the entire litigation initiated by CAB was funded by Lalit Modi,” Swamy said.

Swamy also alleged that his earlier plea was wrongly rejected by the Madras High Court on the issue. The high court on January 20 had dismissed Swamy’s PIL challenging the suspension of CSK and Rajasthan Royals, saying it was not maintainable. Star-studded CSK, then led by M S Dhoni, and Rajasthan Royals were on July 14, last year suspended for two years from the IPL in a clean-up exercise following the 2013 betting scam involving their top officials Meiyappan and Raj Kundra.