Rahul Johri, the BCCI’s chief executive officer, will demit office this month after the board accepted his resignation on Thursday. He will leave a year before his five-year contract was to close out.
Johri decided to quit last December, soon after the BCCI elected a new administration lead by former India captain Sourav Ganguly. He was to originally leave in April, but continued in the job even though it wasn’t clear why he had been given an extension.
Since Ganguly’s administration took charge, Johri’s role had diminished considerably as the BCCI decided to reset the management structure of the board to the pre-reform era, with the office bearers retaining the leadership role. Ganguly along with BCCI secretary Jay Shah have chaired all the key BCCI meetings and are representatives to the ICC meetings.
Johri will be the second senior official to exit the BCCI’s professional wing after Santosh Rangnekar quit as the chief financial officer last November. Rangnekar had put his papers abruptly a fortnight after Ganguly’s administration was elected last October.
The Lodha committee’s recommendation that asked for the board to separate their governance and management wings resulted in the BCCI hiring both Johri and Rangnekar in June 2016. Their appointments was part of an initiative called ‘Project Transformation’ – initiated by former BCCI president Shashank Manohar – aimed at improving the board’s governance, operational and financial processes.
Johri assumed wider powers during the tenure of the Committee of Administrators (CoA), which was appointed by the Supreme Court in January 2017 as a supervisory authority to facilitate the BCCI’s implementation of the Lodha committee’s reforms.
Along with the CoA, he was involved in the BCCI and ICC brokering a truce over the new finance model. He also oversaw the sale of the IPL media rights deal which Star India bagged in 2017 by paying a record US $2.55 billion for five years.
Johri’s supervision was not limited to just the running of the BCCI. Johri played a key role during the controversial stepping down of Anil Kumble as India’s head coach immediately after the 2017 Champions Trophy.
In October 2018, Johri faced sexual harassment allegation from an anonymous woman as part of the #MeToo movement. In November, Johri resumed office after the independent committee appointed by the CoA did not find him guilty in what was seen as a contentious clean chit.