Mohun Bagan has been expelled for the current iLeague and have been banned for the next two seasons for iLeague. mohunbaganclub.com reviews the incidents and gaps in the judgement. Today’s article will focus on gaps and intentions – and mohunbaganclub.com will leave this to the readers to decide what went right and what went wrong. For this article, mohunbaganclub.com has kept aside the actions of Mohun Bagan officials, as a separate article will follow mentioning their acts.
First we shall look for the Justice Ganguly committee and his decisions – The one-man committee was set up by AIFF after Mohun Bagan requested them for a hearing on behalf of the club, and the Advocate for AIFF recommended Justice Ganguly’s name. Mind it – his name was recommeneded by teh Advocate of AIFF. Justice Ganguly help the hearing at Mumbai, and both AIFF and Mohun Bagan representatives participated in the hearing. Surprisingly, there was a third party involved – the organisers, and they were not called for the hearing. Later, AIFF official’ Kushal Das’ statement did mention that the match commissioner mentioned the organiser’s responsibility as well which justice Ganguly overlooked or ignored. Justice Ganguly gave the judgement on the basis of the evidenced put up by AIFF and Mohun Bagan. AIFF was much more organised – and their documetns were more having Government stamping – e.g. Police Commissioner’s statement, Match Commissioner’s report, referee’s statement (surprisingly the guilty’s statement was used by AIFF to punish Mohun Bagan) while Mohun Bagan focused on the actual scenario that got ignored. Hope Justice Ganguly understands the statement given by Syed Rahim Nabi – Nabi could have died – and that official record would have helped Ganguly a bit more. It was clear that Ganguly was not interested on the actual situation of the ground, but was more interested in documents. As Kushal Das mentioned that Ganguly ignored the organiser’s role – it was clear that his motive or focus was only on Mohun Bagan’s decision and nothing beyond that (even not the reason behind the decision) – Guilty ? Yes- Reason – not to be considered!
Now let us see AIFF’s role in this whole affair – within minutes of Bagan’s letter declining participation into the game, AIFF CEO mentioned a specific clause of the rule book and mentioned that Mohun Bagan will be banned as per the rule book. It seemed he was predetermined to ban Mohun Bagan and did not wait even for consulting with others. Obviously, if the rule book was not followed abd Bagan was not banned- he would have been in deep shit. So the ban or the intention of AIFF to ban Mohun Bagan was to satisfy his big ego. It must be considered that after justice Ganguly’s statement was given and before the same was discussed in the "core committee" – a section of media came to know about the content of the judgement. One very well understands the source of this "leak". More over, 2 out of 4 clubs that formed the "core committee" (surprisingly that had a club from North East with no success in national level of Indian football) were against the hursh punishment of Mohun Bagan, and 2 of them supproted (one – from Goa supported just becuase they were penalised by AIFF recently) it was a tie – and AIFF voted against Mohun Bagan. So it is clear that AIFF did not want Mohun Bagan into iLeague any more, knowing very well that 60% of gate fees come from Mohun Bagan supporters – was that becuase of Bagan not willing to play in the second half? 2 AIFF officials who were Bengalis and can read bengali could have gone through any vernacular news paper and would have easily realised that if the game continued in the second half there could have been more damages. Already Bagan’s 40+ supporters were hit by police and Nabi was taken to the hospital. Instead of rushing to know Nabi’s situation – the CEO of iLeague Committee was busy suspending Bagan. His act not only changed the focus from the poor refereeing and mismanagement, but he also was busy documenting losses for Bagan’s absence. He even ignored the ruling of a City Court. Was this because of his personal clashes with one of the Bagan officials or was this because of his big ego ? Will Bagan be able to ask the Court to track and check whom was Sunando Dhar talking to a day before the match, during the match and just after the match? More over, involvement of one of the Vice Presidents, and a neighbour of Mohun Bagan’s General Secretary in Santiniketan, should be checked as well. Wasthe outcome of the ban because of egos of these officials and their differences with Bagan officials – and was that too big that they even ignored a Court’s judgement?
Referee and Assistant Referees– Bagan officials had a written complaints against the referee and the assistant referees much before the game. A video telecast will clearly show how the referee committed mistakes in the first half of the game – and for all cases the mistakes went against Bagan. Will Bagan be able to document and show whom was he connected to 72 hours before the game during the break and 48 hours after the break? Same is applicable for his assistants as well – and let an independent government body go through their asset list once – many things could be clear but will that be done?
We shall discuss Bagan officials’ acts in a separate article.
