Why Arun Jaitley should have stood up against Srinivasan

It’s now apparent that N Srinivasan, even with his back to the wall, has enough clout to stay president of the BCCI. Yesterday’s defiant, if super-defensive, press conference suggested that he clearly had the numbers required to defeat any resolution which might be moved to unseat him.

“When the president doesn’t step down voluntarily, it means that he is sure that he will have no problem in dealing with the numbers game if the need arises," said a BCCI member. “Even those who have been voicing dissent to the media without willing to come on record know that they don’t have the requisite numbers to publicly open a front against the president. And in the wake of all this, with just four months remaining for the AGM, no sane member would push for moving a resolution against the president right now,” reports ESPN.

“The political heavyweights in this play include Arun Jaitley, leader of the opposition in the upper house of Parliament, president of the Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA) and the man tipped to replace Srinivasan as the next BCCI president. Rajiv Shukla, the IPL chairman, is a prominent member of the ruling Congress party, and junior minister for parliamentary affairs,” the ESPN report adds.

In a nutshell, the three most important actors in this theatre of the absurd (excluding N Srinivasan, of course) are a senior BJP office bearer, a senior Congressman and the NCP chief.

Between them, the clout that they wield has ensured the (temporary) continuance of N Srinivasan as president of the BCCI. All three have been making the usual political statements, saying that they will wait till the three-member commission appointed by Srinivasan to go into allegations against his son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan who has been arrested on charges of betting submits their findings.

Arun Jaitley has missed a trick here. If he had belligerently demanded the resignation of N Srinivasan as soon as the Meiyappan arrest took place, he could have projected himself and his party as flag bearers in the battle against corruption.

However, any such frontal attack on Srinivasan comes with a downside. If Jaitley had vociferously pushed for a resolution and the subsequent resolution failed, Jaitley could have found himself out in the cold – even if the BJP would have emerged smelling of roses and could have scored a point or two in the forthcoming general elections, by portraying the attempted resolution as another demonstration of the BJP’s commitment to eradicate corruption.

It’s like the Janlokpal agitation of Anna Hazare. To begin with, it was the Congress which was projected and targeted as the embodiment of corruption. By the time the vote on the Lokpal bill came up in parliament, it was apparent that the entrie political class was one – and the BJP looked no different than the Congress.

Jaitley, and the BJP, through the Srinivasan-Meiyappan mess, were presented another opportunity to occupy the high ground. The BJP had everything to gain: the headlines, a unique position on news TV and in editorial opinions, by demanding that Srinivasan resign immediately.

But that wouldn’t suit Jaitley’s ambitions. By playing along with Srinivasan and the other strongmen of the BCCI, Jaitley greatly increases his own chances of being elected president of the BCCI, even if it’s an opportunity lost for the BJP.

And president of the BCCI looks like the most powerful position that Jaitley could ever aspire to.