Former India captain Shantha Rangaswamy has stepped down from her position as a member of the Cricket Advisory Committee (CAC) and director of the Indian Cricketers Association (ICA) after being served a Conflict of Interest notice by BCCI Ethics Officer DK Jain. Shantha Rangaswamy, who was a member of the CAC along with Kapil Dev and Anshuman Gaekwad, sent her resignation letter to the Committee of Administrators (CoA) and the Board's CEO, Rahul Johri via email in the early hours on Sunday. "I have other plans so have decided to move on. The CAC was anyway meeting once in a year or once in two years so I did not understand the conflict," Rangaswamy told PTI. "It was an honour to be on the CAC committee. It will be tough to find suitable former cricketers for any administrative role in the current scenario (conflict of interest). The ICA I would have resigned anyway before the elections were held. So it was a matter of time," she added.

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Shantha Rangaswamy steps down from CAC

The BCCI Ethics Officer D K Jain on Saturday had sent a notice to CAC, asking the former cricketers who picked the current India coach to respond by October 10 to the Conflict of Interest allegations leveled against them. MPCA life member Sanjiv Gupta had filed the complaint against the trio who picked Ravi Shastri as the head coach in August. As per the BCCI constitution, no individual can hold more than one post at the same time. In the complaint, Gupta has claimed that the CAC members don multiple cricketing roles. He wrote that 1983 World Cup-winning captain Kapil is conflicted as he is a commentator, owner of a floodlight company, member of Indian Cricketers Association, besides his CAC role.  Likewise, Gupta alleged that Gaekwad too is conflicted as he owns an academy and is a member of the BCCI Affiliation Committee. Shantha Rangaswamy is alleged to be conflicted because of her multiple roles with the CAC and ICA. The CAC had also picked the women's head coach W V Raman in December but at that time it was an ad-hoc committee. Shastri was a re-appointed for a two-year period, ending with the 2021 T20 World Cup in India. This is Shastri's fourth stint with the national team, having served briefly as the Cricket Manager (2007 tour of Bangladesh), Team Director (2014-2016) and head coach (2017-2019).

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Rahul Dravid’s conflict of interest

Rahul Dravid deposed himself before the Ethics Officer to explain the charges filed against him. The complaint was filed by the MPCA member Sanjeev Gupta who had stated that instead of completely resigning from his position at India Cements, the Indian batting legend had only taken a leave of absence. Dravid, however, found some support from the Committee of Administrators (CoA) head Vinod Rai, who stated that a leave of absence from an organization cannot be seen as a conflict with that person’s current employment position. A BCCI official spoke to PTI about the matter. He said, "The CoA chief had written a note before the deposition that they feel if Dravid has taken a Leave of Absence, then he is not in conflict. He cited examples of former RBI Governor Rajan, who took leave of absence from his teaching role at the University of Chicago".

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