New Delhi: The Board of Control for Cricket in India may govern the country’s most lucrative public sport, but according to the Central Information Commission (CIC), it is still not public enough to be answerable under the Right to Information Act, 2005 (RTI). On May 18, the CIC ruled that the cricket body is not liable to make disclosures to the public under the Act. This overturns a 2018 ruling by the CIC itself that the BCCI must make such disclosures.“The ruling effectively shields the BCCI from statutory public disclosure obligations despite years of litigation, committee recommendations, several critical Supreme Court rulings and internal government deliberations that favour greater transparency,” says Venkatesh Nayak, director of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) in New Delhi and an RTI activist, who has spent years pursuing records related to the BCCI’s status under the transparency law.Nayak also questions the procedural basis of the latest decision of the information commission, arguing that one information commissioner has effectively overturned an earlier decision of a previous information commissioner, without referring the matter to a larger bench.The latest ruling and the sequence of events preceding it have revived questions that have hovered over the country’s top cricketing body for years: True, the BCCI is not “funded” by the government of India. Nor was it set up by the Indian government or a state authority. Yet, it exercises near-monopoly control over the sport. It selects the Indian national cricket team. It represents India at the International Cricket Council. It receives state support, including financial support, in the form of security deployments, tax concessions and access to public infrastructure.And, as the Supreme Court itself observed in 2016, it exercises a near-monopoly over the sport with the tacit as well as overt approval of governments.“It must be noted that these observations were in a ruling that stemmed from serious charges levelled against BCCI,” says Nayak, referring to the betting scandal and spot-fixing allegations against cricket tournaments in 2013, to probe which the government set up the Justice Mukul Mudgal Committee. “Some players were arrested and there was an involvement of some owners of cricket teams in the scandal,” Nayak reminds, “all this happened while the BCCI continued to be embroiled in tax disputes with the government and claim the status of a society, beyond the purview of RTI disclosures,” he says.Nor were the observations in 2016 novel in every respect.In a January 2005 ruling as well, the Supreme Court had observed the sweeping impact of BCCI on India’s most-favoured sporting activity. It had said:It [BCCI] exercises total control over the players, umpires and other officers. The Rules of the Board clearly demonstrate that without its recognition no competitive cricket can be hosted either within or outside the country … As the board controls the profession of cricketers, its actions are required to be judged and viewed by higher standards … [Its activities are] akin to the public duties of state functions functions, so that if there is any breach of a constitutional or a statutory obligation or the rights of other citizens, the aggrieved party shall be entitled to seek redress under the ordinary law or by way of a Writ Petition under Article 226 of the Constitution.In its May 18 decision, the CIC held that none of these factors were enough to bring the BCCI within the scope of the RTI Act. The commission ruled that the board does not satisfy the definition of “public authority” under Section 2(h) of the law, as it was not created by nor is substantially financed by the state.Nayak argues against the CIC’s interpretation of “substantial” financing. He also says that the CIC ruling overlooks a substantial documentary trail suggesting the opposite conclusion, including the Law Commission of India’s (LCI) 275th report from April 2018, which specifically dealt with the BCCI and a legal framework for the applicability of the RTI Act to it.“Substantial financing, also under Section 2(h) of the RTI Act, should have been viewed by the CIC in light of the LCI’s finding that public financing need not take the form of direct grants. Tax concessions, subsidised land allocations and access to state infrastructure (including security, venues, tax breaks) were forms of indirect support that amount to substantial financing.The LCI had pointed to examples of cricket events led by the BCCI receiving public land at nominal rates, including a 99-year lease in Himachal Pradesh, granted at Re 1 per month.Through multiple RTI applications, appeals and interventions before information commissions, Nayak has assembled correspondence, government records and legal opinions that, he says, show repeated official acknowledgment of the BCCI’s public character and regulatory authority.Who wants accountability of BCCI?The dispute over the BCCI’s accountability under the RTI Act has moved through the Union sports ministry, the LCI, the Supreme Court and numerous information commissioners. At different points, official records obtained by Nayak show, there was clear acknowledgement that the board performs public functions. What is more, the sports ministry itself has accepted the BCCI can be under the purview of the transparency law.In August 2018, the sports ministry informed the CIC that the BCCI could be treated as a public authority under the RTI Act. The Under Secretary in the sports ministry wrote in an official communication:The Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports agrees with the recommendations that the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) shall be declared as public authority under the Right to Information Act, 2005.This written remark was in response to the LCI’s 2018 report, which had recommended bringing the BCCI under the RTI Act.“This was a significant communication because it showed that, internally, the Union government had already examined the LCI’s recommendations and accepted the view that the BCCI could fall within the RTI framework,” says Nayak. And the CIC again chose to ignore the decision.Yet, no formal notification or legislative step followed this acknowledgement.Another key step in this chain was taken by the Supreme Court of India before the sports ministry. In 2016, the court accepted major parts of the Justice R.M. Lodha Committee report. This committee had been set up by the top court to “overhaul” the functioning of the BCCI after the 2013 betting scandal.The court observed in its order that the board performed a “public function” and exercised “monopolistic” control over cricket in the country. It noted that the BCCI conducted a vast array of functions, from selection to organising events in India and overseas, even though it may have been registered under the Societies Registration Act in Tamil Nadu.The CIC says in its May 18, 2026 order:A careful and contextual reading of the [2016] judgement demonstrates that the court neither declared the BCCI to be a ‘state’ under Article 12 of the constitution nor conclusively held it to be a ‘public authority” under Section 2(h) of the RTI Act, 2005.What it does not acknowledge, Nayak points out through the records, is that the Supreme Court had, in fact, gone further than CIC accepts. It has recognised the virtual monopoly of the BCCI over the field of cricket, observing:“The public at large has a right to know and demand information as to the activities and functions of the BCCI especially when it deals with funds collected in relation to those activities as a trustee.”The court had then described bringing the BCCI under the RTI Act as a “possible first step” and asked the LCI to examine the issue. “However, the CIC completely ignores this important part of the judgement while selectively quoting from it,” says Nayak.How CIC has interpreted these developmentsThe CIC’s latest order finds the observations of all these authorities insufficient to bring the BCCI under the purview of the RTI Act. It notes the Supreme Court’s refusal to classify the board as “state” as one reason not to bring it within the statutory definition of a “public authority” under Section 2(h) of the Act.“However, the court had said the government could bring the body under the Act as a ‘possible first step’ for assuring its accountability, and not the other way around,” says Nayak.While it is true that the core tests under Section 2(h) relate to ownership, control and substantial financiang by the government to determine the nature (public or not) of an authority; however, Nayak points out that the CIC’s May 2026 order does not even refer to the Union sports ministry’s August 2018 communication agreeing with the LCI recommendation to declare BCCI a public authority.He argues that the commission treated the question of BCCI’s nature as though it was being examined on a “clean slate”, or de novo, as if the CIC’s own 2018 ruling and the documentary record generated since then did not exist. The May 2026 order, he says, omits crucial material including correspondence, parliamentary statements and portions of the LCI’s analysis that refer to state financial support for BCCI.Nor, he says, does the order engage with the arguments and facts offered by the CIC itself, in October 2018, when it ruled that the board fell within the ambit of the transparency law.Nayak calls these “narrow and selectively applied interpretations” to the observations of the court as well as the CIC, LCI and Lodha committee.In October 2018, then-Central Information Commissioner, M. Sridhar Acharyulu, had ruled that the BCCI was indeed a public authority and therefore liable to respond to RTI queries. The order had heavily relied on the Supreme Court’s 2016 observations in the Lodha case. It had noted that the board exercised “complete control over cricket in India” and performed functions that were “public duties” affecting citizens.Is BCCI a National Sports Federation?In its 275th report, the LCI argued that BCCI “virtually acts as a National Sports Federation (NSF)” due to the breadth and scope of its involvement in and control over cricket. (Other sports bodies listed as NSF by the sports ministry attract the RTI Act.) The LCI had noted in 2018:In light of the above stated facts [the scale of BCCI’s role in controlling Indian cricket], since all other sports bodies which are listed as NSFs are covered under the RTI Act, it is inconceivable as to why BCCI should be an exception.On this subject, even the Union sports ministry makes an interesting – but tenuous-sounding argument – against including BCCI as an NSF. This is in the August 2018 communication from the sports ministry to the Department of Legal Affairs in the Union Ministry of Law and Justice. It says:However, as regards the recommendations regarding inclusion of the BCCI in the list of National Sports Federations available on the website of the [sports] ministry, the same has not been found feasible because the BCCI has not been given specific recognition by the ministry. Inclusion of the BCCI in the list would entail the inclusion of many such sports bodies in the list of the ministry. This may lead to legal and administrative complications.Nayak says it is “tenuous” for the government, which frames policy and regulates the entire country through laws, to say that there will be administrative complications if it performs this role with respect to the sporting body. He also points to amendments made to the National Sports Governance Act, 2025, which narrowed RTI applicability for sports bodies at the last minute, effectively keeping the BCCI outside its scope.Observations made in the Law Commission of India’s 275th report on “Legal Framework: BCCI vis-à-vis RTI ACT, 2005”.Tax exemptions to BCCI, a ‘private’ body?In January 2019, the Union minister of state for finance Shiv Pratap Shukla told Lok Sabha that a tax demand of over Rs 1,303 crores had been raised on BCCI in December 2018. However, the amount was yet to fall due for recovery, the minister said.In March 2020, the minister of state for finance, Anurag Thakur, told Lok Sabha that a tax demand of around Rs 570 crore had been raised against BCCI in the 2017-18 assessment year. The BCCI appealed against this demand, after 30% of the amount had been recovered. In the assessment year 2015-16, Rs 178 crores was recovered from BCCI, though Rs 36.21 lakhs remained to be recovered.BCCI also faced penalties under the Income Tax Act for 2016-17, 2012-13 and 2011-12, amounting to over Rs 135 crore. (Thakur was BCCI president in 2016-17).“All such instances point towards the need for greater accountability and transparency in the cricket body, which is not new to allegations of corruption and serious mismanagement,” says Nayak, pointing to the 2005 Supreme Court ruling that notes tax exemptions as a factor in determining the nature of the body. The court then ruled:It [BCCI…] enjoys benefits by way of tax exemption and right to use stadia at nominal annual rent. It earns a huge revenue not only by selling tickets to the viewers but also selling the right to exhibit films live on TV and broadcasting the same … Its control over the sport of competitive cricket is deep, pervasive and complete.There is another important aspect to this matter. In February 2025, Bombay High Court set aside an adverse observation made by the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal regarding BCCI’s tax-exempt status. As a result, BCCI’s Section 12A tax exemption registration remains valid at present. However, if the Bombay High Court judgement is not overturned by the Supreme Court, the Income Tax Department could theoretically be required to refund the thousands of crores it has recovered from BCCI, apart from applicable interest on those refunds.(Venkatesh Nayak thanks Sanjeev Chaturvedi of Indore for sharing crucial material that helped craft RTI queries related to the BCCI over the years.)