Lodha Committee head, R.M. Lodha has been making news ever since the ouster of Anurag Thakur. Known as an honest bureaucrat who has fought corruption all his life, has recently asked all state association to remove the cover and make ticketrevenue, pass allocations public. This is a major step in curbing the corruption menace which has always existed, may be not puiblicly but no denying it exists.
According to him, ticket allocation is a way of “obliging the people who matter” and is prevalent.
Speaking to The Times of India he said, “Let us remember that complimentary passes reduce the availability of tickets to the public and revenue from their sale,”Lodha, a former Chief Justice of India, was quoted as saying by the Times of India. “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. We all know that complimentary passes are a largesse by the cricket association concerned, given as entitlement to certain sections of society.”
Adding further he posed the following questions to the 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.”
It is a known secret that the allocation of complimentary passes has always been a thorny issue for state association to answer.
It is good to see that Lodha, like his predecessors has not minced words and has actually making his actions speak, ‘louder than words’.
