Fans asked to file additional affidavit

The Delhi High Court Wednesday asked two cricket enthusiasts to file an additional affidavit stating their position on media publicity following a contempt petition filed by the Board of Control for Cricket in India.

The division bench of Chief Justice Arijit Pasayat and Justice D.K. Jain said the papers must by filed in a week. Their direction came a day after the BCCI's counsel K.K. Venugopal and Radha Rangaswamy said Rahul Mehra and Shantanu Sharma had recently launched a web site and started a media trial against the board.

Mehra and Sharma had filed a Public Interest Litigation alleging irregularities in BCCI's functioning after the match-fixing controversy broke out.

Yesterday, they tendered an apology before the court and said the web site is now closed. However, on Wednesday they said some material is still on the site's hyper-link and would get erased after a few days.

The PIL calls for ensuring that the BCCI's accounts are audited transparently by the Comptroller of Audit General, and that it functions primarily for the promotion of cricket.

The BCCI officials should not function as private empires of some businessmen and traders who have come to control and abuse cricket for their own interest and profit, it said.

UNI

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