The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to accord urgent hearing on a plea seeking postponement of the 13th edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) scheduled between March 29 and May 24.
A vacation bench comprising Justices U U Lalit and Aniruddha Bose told the petitioner that the petition can wait till the re-opening of the court on March 16 and can be mentioned before the regular bench.
“This IPL is just a domestic professional tournament with no contribution to ICC records and is a private tournament and the risk in the times of Covid-19 (coronavirus) is quite high due to huge crowd gathering including players, staff, cheerleaders etc,” the plea said.
Referring to a number of Coronavirus cases across the world and deaths caused due to it, the plea further said, “They (BCCI and other concerned authorities) should explain how they are going to deal with the recent threat of Covid-19 and is it not the right time to either postpone or defer the same to future date as the threat is apparent in all probabilities looking into the present scenario."
Meanwhile, Union Sports Ministry on Thursday instructed all national federations, including the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), to avoid public gatherings. Due to unavoidable reasons, if any sporting event has to be organised, it has to be behind closed doors.
