JAIPUR: Eventually the inevitable happened on Friday as Rajasthan State Sports Council (RSSC) sealed the Rajasthan Cricket Association (RCA) office and its academy along with Sawai Man Singh (SMS) Stadium cricket ground. The RSSC secretary Sohan Ram Choudhary had sent a notice to the RCA on Friday (February 23) to handover the aforementioned property to the council, but when it did not happen, the former sealed the entire space.
The state cricket association had earlier this month sent a letter to the RSSC with regard to the renewal of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), but the latter did not take the matter forward.
Under the MoU, the state cricket association gets the permission to use the SMS cricket ground along with the North and South Blocks which belong to RSSC. Its five-year term ended on Wednesday (February 21).
It has been learnt that the RSSC secretary had sent a letter to the RCA officials on February 19 in which he mentioned about the cricket body failing to honour the MoU conditions and not making the payment on several occasions. The letter also mentions that RCA is under a debt of Rs5 crore. Purportedly this became the reason for the sports council to not renew the MoU.
Since there was no communication from the RCA on this front, registrar Archana Singh appointed additional registrar (processing) Jitendra Prasad Sharma to investigate the matter.
"The investigation will be carried out on February 29 and all the involved parties are requested to submit their replies in writing…," read the letter by Sharma which was sent to the RSSC secretary along with RCA secretary Bhawani Shankar Samota, president Vaibhav Gehlot, vice-president Shakti Singh Rathore and treasurer Rampal Sharma on February 22.
RCA president Vaibhav said that the sports council should have given some time to handover the property to them. "They pasted the notice without giving us sufficient time. Usually there is a seven or a 15-day period that is given to any party before they can handover the premises, but they did not even consider that," he said.
