New Delhi: Cricketer Ajay Jadeja, facing a five-year ban by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on match-fixing allegations, has filed petition before an arbitrator after the matter was referred to it by the Delhi High Court. BCCI counsel Radha Rangaswamy told that Jadeja and BCCI appeared before former Delhi High Court judge Justice J K Mehra on Friday and the cricketer filed a petition with almost identical issues as were raised before the court. The Arbitrator has given time till November 8 to the BCCI to file its reply, she said adding the hearing of the case would commence only after the next date. The BCCI and Jadeja had agreed to settle the issue through arbitration and withdrew their cases from the High Court, which directed the Arbitrator to make every effort to dispose the case within two months. Jadeja's counsel P P Malhotra said the cricketer agreed to refer the matter for arbitration because "for the past two years due to procedural problems there was not much progress in the case". While referring the matter to the Arbitrator, the High Court had made it clear that its order passed in the "special circumstances" of the case would not be treated as a precedent in any other case of whatsoever nature. Jadeja has challenged the ban on the ground that it was based on BCCI's investigator K Madhavan's findings about the allegations of match-fixing, which in turn were "entirely based" on the report of CBI. "The CBI itself had stated that its report on match-fixing issue was not legally enforceable," Jadeja's counsel claimed. He alleged that Madhavan, while probing the matter on behalf of BCCI neither gave any chance to Jadeja to explain his position nor supplied any documents to him. Denying Jadeja an opportunity to defend himself before the BCCI investigator was against the principle of natural justice, his counsel said. There was no "direct evidence" against Jadeja as the conclusion about the match- fixing charges was drawn against him on the basis of the statements of some persons and his meetings with them, he said. Meeting various persons for a public figure like him could not be "the ground for drawing such conclusions," the counsel said.
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Tags: cricket, ajay jadeja, board of control for cricket in india (bcci), match-fixing, arbitrator, delhi high court, radha rangaswamy, justice j k mehra, p p malhotra, k madhavan, cbi.