New Delhi, Jul 30 (PTI) The Supreme Court has quashed the lifetime ban imposed on former Ranji Trophy cricketer Santhosh Karunakaran by the Kerala Cricket Association and directed that his case be heard afresh.
A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta set aside the 2021 order of the Kerala High Court, which had dismissed Karunakaran’s plea and struck down the decision of the KCA in blacklisting him.
“After going through the impugned order dated June 21, 2021, and the order of blacklisting dated August 22, 2021, we are of the opinion that the High Court has taken a very harsh view in rejecting the writ petition and the writ appeal preferred by the appellant on the purported ground of concealment of material facts concluding that the appellant had approached the writ court with unclean hands,” the bench said.
The apex court said that Karunakaran had made out a plausible case to suggest that the proceedings before the ombudsman were non-transparent and that the copies of the relevant records/orders were not provided to him.
“The documents and communications placed on record also suggest that many a time, it became difficult for the appellant and his counsel to address the ombudsman during the proceedings of the original application because the virtual hearing gateway was frequently interrupted without any justification,” the bench said.
Karunakaran, also a member of the Thiruvananthapuram District Cricket Association, had approached the ombudsman-cum-ethics officer in 2019 to frame a model byelaw to be implemented in all the districts of the state in terms of the model Byelaw recommended by the Lodha Committee and adopted by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).
The ombudsman dismissed his plea in October 2020, citing his failure to include the District Cricket Associations as parties in the case despite repeated directions.
Karunakaran assailed the ombudsman’s decision in the Kerala High Court, arguing that the ombudsman’s proceedings lacked transparency and he was never informed about those specific directions.
The Kerala High Court, both single judge and division bench, dismissed his petitions, noting that he approached the court with “unclean hands” and concealed material facts.
Pursuant to the rejection of the appeal, the Kerala Cricket Association issued a show cause notice to the cricketer under Section 15(4)(s) of the byelaws of the KCA and imposed a lifetime ban in August 2021, blacklisting Karunakaran from all activities.
The top court said that the earlier order passed by the ombudsman, observing that the impleadment of the DCAs may entail unnecessary delay, definitely gave rise to a reasonable belief in the cricketer that he was not under any obligation to implead the DCAs in the original application filed before the ombudsman.
“Otherwise, also, the only prayer of the appellant in the original application was to frame uniform byelaws in sync with the recommendations of the Justice R.M. Lodha Committee. Thus, the application filed by the appellant was not in the form of any adversarial litigation requiring the mandatory opportunity of hearing to the DCAs,” the bench said.
