Mr. Srinivasan must quit every single honorary office he currently holds in cricket. If the IPL has any reasonable sense of propriety, then its entire governing council should resign and be reconstituted in some expanded form without the participation of its present membership, and with the presence of eminent individuals from other walks of life. The BCCI should also create positions for eminent individuals from other walks of life, who do not stand to gain as members of associations, as members of its Board. It could do far worse than to invite Ramchandra Guha to be a member of its working committee. The Board must open itself to competent scrutiny (not of the Rajdeep Sardesai variety).
The facts in the Mudgal report are clear. But the main reason Srinivasan is no longer fit to run cricket is his persistently defiant and officious stance over the past year. He has consistently claimed that he has done nothing wrong. Here is his press conference from May 26, 2013. He made several claims that day. On two counts, he has been proved wrong. First, he promised an impartial probe. Yet, the first probe panel constituted by BCCI was found to be illegal by the Bombay High Court. This was after the matter was put before the High Court by a member association of the BCCI. The subsequent probe committee recommended by the Supreme Court reached conclusions that are far more substantive than the original one which was (a) not made public, and (b) going by what Mr. Shah said about its findings, seemed intent on giving an old fashioned "clean chit" to the IPL franchise owners. Second, he continually claimed that Mr. Meiyappan was merely "enthusiastic". At the time, this was an insult to any reasonable person's intelligence, but now, it is more than that. The facts have been established to the extent that only two possibilities remains.
1. Srinivasan knowingly lied when he contended that Meiyappan did not fall in any of the categories which invite the attention of the IPL's rules, despite contrary evidence collected in the public domain at the time.
2. Srinivasan was running a shoddy IPL franchise in which there was not the simplest check that might have controlled the actions of an individual in the most exclusive part of the franchise - the team dug out during a match. On that count alone, Srinivasan has shown that he is plainly incompetent at running a franchise.
The discussion of these events here in India occur on a peculiarly schizophrenic plane - a combination of high political intrigue and petty personal squabbles. Unsurprisingly, there is a lot of outrage, but no actual standards to which questioners and discussants on television attempt to hold the conduct of the BCCI to. There is far too much spectatorial speculation about "how things should be, but why they won't be so" (usually because of some unspecified cunning shenanigans by Srinivasan or his cronies). All this comes with the unstated common understanding that everybody already knows everything thats going on, and that these things cannot and need not be specifically brought up. Ironically these same people on television then turn around and complete the wink wink routine about how Nilay Dutta, one of the members of the commission who has been more circumspect about the case against Mr. Meiyappan (for good reasons), might be in the committee to ensure a split verdict.
The presence of Mr. Dutta is a healthy thing in a fact finding commission. A reasonable commission whose role is to be a fact finding body should have a role for a lawyer who thinks like a defense lawyer as well. Mr. Dutta's version of the report is reasonable, in that, the objections he raises are legitimately ones that anybody seeing the matter from Mr. Meiyappan's point of view might have of the evidence available to this committee.
Mr. Dutta's report does not absolve Mr. Srinivasan because "I have done nothing wrong" is hardly the standard by which the honorary president of the BCCI should expect to be judged. Srinivasan should resign. Failing this, he should be fired.