BCCI should come under RTI act: SAI DG

New Delhi: Sports Authority of India (SAI) Director General, Jiji Thomson today advocated the need to bring BCCI under the purview of the RTI act and said the spirit of the game has suffered due to the spot-fixing scandal in IPL 6.

"We don`t want match-fixing to take place in cricket. Cricket has such a good set-up and why to spoil the entire beauty of the game with such wrongdoings. The spirit of the game has suffered," Thomson said. "I am of the view that BCCI should come under the RTI act," he added. Indian cricket was rocked by the spot-fixing scandal, leading to the arrest of three cricketers including India international S Sreesanth and Chennai Super Kings`s Team principal Gurunath Meiyappan, who is also the son-in-law of BCCI President N Srinivasan. It also led to Srinivasan agreeing to "step aside" as BCCI President under a compromise formula that brought back former chief Jagmohan Dalmiya as head of a four-member "interim arrangement" to run the Board. Meanwhile, Thomson said SAI needed to set up a system to monitor the activities of national campers and coaches at various training centres across the country. He was referring to the case of Olympian boxer Vijender Singh who went on an extended leave from the National camp at NIS Patiala following a drug scandal without informing the concerned officials. "C-DAC, which is a scientific society under the Department of Information Technology, is coming up with a same kind of system to track the activities of national campers. The study of the project is going on. The system is currently under check," he informed. Thomson said Beijing Olympic medallist Vijender, who is presently training at SAI`s Sonepat Centre, can join NIS Patiala whenever he feels like going. "He has joined Sonepat. It`s a temporary arrangement. Whenever he feels like, he can go and join NIS Patiala. But to my knowledge, has has not applied for the Patiala camp," he said. Vijender was hesitant to travel for the national camp at the NIS Patiala citing personal reasons. On the government decision to set up one Centre of Excellence each for Sports Medicine and Sports Coaching, Thomson said, "The project report is yet not ready. The preliminary report will come by June end and the final report by December. By this year end, we will come to know where both need to be located." PTI