The Pakistan Cricket Board has announced the setting up of a constitution commission to find out the anomalies and gaps in the clauses of the present document and chalk out a new one.
The commission is to be headed by a former judge of the apex court, Justice Karamat Husain Bhandari, Zahid Hamid, MNA and a third member whose acceptance is awaited. The whole board structure is based on adhocism and it is not known under what authority the PCB has constituted a high-level panel to draw up a revised constitution for previously it was the Federal Sports Ministry, in collaboration with the Law Ministry, which was providing the constitutional document to the Cricket Board. This was presented to the highest tier of the cricket organisation, the General Body, the full house of which debated the pros and cons of the document. The members suggested amendments to the document sent by the Ministry. It was the General Body, which had the power to make alterations in the constitution and endorse it by consensus or a majority decision.
It is rather surprising how the chairman, an ad hoc appointee of the patron, the President of the country, or the Chief Executive, who was appointed and raised to the level of No 2 in the board setup by the previous chairman, Lt-Gen Tauqir Zia (Rtd), had the prerogative to form a commission for the purpose of constitution-making.
The Patron may have directed the Law Ministry to look into the gaps in the constitution or he may have constituted a panel for that purpose. Anyway it beats one's mind how the chairman of the PCB took the initiative of constituting a commission for purposes of amending or giving a fresh document having new clauses in the constitution.
Besides, if at all the Bhandari commission takes up its work and finishes it in three or four months - the cutoff date suggested by the board, which body is to go through the contents of the document and give it a stamp of endorsement.
According to PCB chairman the existing constitutional document has been dumped into the dust-bin. However, this is not the position. The present document, under which Shaharyar has been appointed, still exists and no new constitution can supersede it unless it is scrapped by the Patron. But then the formation and election of the General Body and the Council will be a tickish issue and will have to be started off afresh. They are the monitoring and supervisory units and cannot be abolished.
The announcement of the Cricket Board by its ad hoc chairman is an illegality and an unconstitutional step which cannot be accepted by the followers of the game. It will harm cricket and may perhaps make the PCB an authoritarian organisation, which is not the case in any cricket-playing country.
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