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Explained: Is cricket a designated sport under National Sports Governance Act? | The Local News
Earlier this week, the Supreme Court asked the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and its state associations to clarify their position on the National Sports Governance Act (NSGA) after multiple litigations involving state cricket associations either for minor changes in their constitution, or disputes arising from factionalism over control of the bodies. A bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice V.
The BCCI had argued that the NSGA doesn't apply to them. even though the National Sports Governance Act 2025 has been enacted, the sport of cricket has not been notified as a designated sport for the National Sports Governance Act to apply,” the BCCI had said in an affidavit before the Odisha High Court in a case relating to the election of the Odisha Cricket Association (OCA) office-bearers.
The BCCI urged the OCA to conduct their elections or risk having its funds withheld and being derecognised. The OCA, in reply, argued that the elections have only been deferred to assess the impact of the NSGA, especially now that cricket is an Olympic sport.
All these back and forth beg the most basic question: Does BCCI come under the NSGA? What is a 'designated sport'?
If cricket does come under the NSGA, does it also come under the RTI? , to explain these, and more, questions.
Q. What does “designated sport” mean under the NSGA, and who decides which sports get notified?
Under the Act, a “designated sport” is any sport discipline that the Central Government, by notification, specifies to be a designated sport, whether for a particular region or State or for the whole of India. The decision is thus an executive act of the Central Government, through the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports.
This matters because the core architecture of sport is a pyramidal structure wherein there must be one National Sports Federation (NSF) for each designated sport, and it is this designation that draws a sport, and its federation, into the recognition and oversight of the National Sports Board (NSB) and the jurisdiction of the National Sports Tribunal (NST). Q.
Why hasn’t cricket been notified as a designated sport, and can the government notify it later? The Act has been brought into force in stages starting January 2026, but no sport has yet been notified as a designated sport, cricket included.
The rollout seems deliberately sequenced, with the machinery of the Board and the Tribunal being made operational before individual sports are brought in. The fact that the BCCI takes no central government funding places it in a distinctive position.
A comparison of the draft Bill tabled in Parliament in July 2025 with the Act as passed in August 2025 reveals a telling change in the structuring of Sections 14 and 15. Act:14.
15. A recognised sports organisation shall ensure that all its voting members and affiliate units, as applicable, complies with—(a) the International Charters and Statutes, as applicable, and shall exercise the rights, perform the duties and discharge the functions as specified therein; and(b) the provisions of this Act and the rules and regulations made there under.
Bill:14. 15.
(2) A recognised sports organisation shall be considered as a public authority under the Right to Information Act, 2005 with respect to the exercise of its functions, duties and powers under this ActWhat the final Act made central, therefore, is the receiving of grants or financial assistance. On the strength of other provisions, for instance Section 27 on the use of national names and insignia, the BCCI may have to comply with the Act to some extent even now.
But until cricket is notified as a designated sport, it is not under the Act. My reading, for the present, is this: although the Act supersedes the National Sports Development Code, 2011, the transition is not yet complete, and until sports are designated and the new framework is fully in operation, the 2011 Code will continue to apply in some measure, as the Ministry’s suspension of the Table Tennis Federation of India (TTFI) in August 2026 showed, an order issued expressly under the powers conferred by the 2011 Code.
In any event, the BCCI was never governed by the Code; it operated under the 2014 Supreme Court judgment and is governed by a Supreme Court-approved constitution. More than anything else, I expect cricket’s inclusion at the 2028 Olympic Games to be the trigger that finally makes it a designated sport and brings the BCCI in as a National Sports Federation, though even then it will not fall under the Right to Information Act (RTI) unless it takes government funding.
The designation of sports is not a one-time window: the Central Government may notify cricket at any time by a fresh notification. The question has now acquired an apex-level dimension.
In its order of 9 September 2026 the Supreme Court asked the BCCI and the state associations to show why they should not be governed by the Act, which suggests that cricket’s entry into the statutory regime may be driven as much by the Court as by a government notification, and possibly sooner than the phased rollout alone would have implied. What is a designated sport under the NSGA?
A look at the rules and definitions. Q.
If cricket isn’t designated, does the National Sports Board have any authority over BCCI at all right now? As things stand, essentially no.
The recognition and regulatory powers of the National Sports Board, and the obligations that attach to a National Sports Federation, such as bringing byelaws into conformity within six months, constituting athletes’ committees, and submitting to election oversight and Tribunal jurisdiction, all largely attach to federations for designated sports. Until cricket is designated and the BCCI is recognised as its federation, the BCCI is not a National Sports Body under the Act, and the Board has no recognition or oversight hold over it.
A few provisions of general application may still be relevant, such as the control over the use of “India”, “National” and national insignia, but the BCCI’s governance is presently anchored not in the National Sports Board but in its Supreme Court-approved constitution and the Court’s continuing directions. Q.
Does the NSGA override the Lodha Committee reforms, or do the two coexist? The Justice Lodha-derived constitution, mandated and approved by the Supreme Court in its 2018 and 2022 orders, governs the BCCI and its state units on its own footing.
Once cricket is designated, the two regimes would overlap on some counts, but they would also diverge on certain points. Where they diverge, the position is unsettled for now, but my sense is that the Supreme Court would eventually require the BCCI to fall in line with the lay of the land.
The question is no longer merely academic. As noted above, the Supreme Court has now asked the BCCI and the state associations why they should not be governed by the Act.
What matters here is the implication: the very court that authored the Lodha framework is itself weighing whether to hand cricket over to the statutory regime. If it does, the coexistence question may be resolved not by a contest between the two frameworks but by the Court itself transitioning cricket from its own supervision to the Act, which would be the most authoritative way the precedence issue could be settled.
Sports Minister Dr. Mansukh MandaviyaQ.
Is BCCI’s argument, that the NSGA doesn’t apply but its Supreme Court-mandated constitution does, legally consistent, or is it picking convenient parts of two frameworks? It is legally consistent, and not, on a fair reading, cherry-picking, because the two frameworks have different trigger conditions.
The Act applies to designated sports; cricket is so far not one, so by the statute’s own terms it does not yet bind the BCCI. The Supreme Court-approved constitution binds the BCCI and its members by force of the Court’s orders, independently of the Act.
The Board is therefore not selecting convenient parts of two live regimes; it is pointing out that one regime has not been enforced upon cricket, while the other is in force and unaffected. That the two happen to point the same way here, namely that elections must be held, does not make the position incoherent.
Critics may say the optics are convenient, and that the Board is content to keep the statutory oversight at bay while embracing the reform elements that reinforce central control over the states. But that is an argument about motive and appearance, not legal consistency.
On the law, the designated-sport point is correct. This stance is, however, now being tested at the highest level.
The Court’s query is a clear signal that the gap the BCCI is relying on may not stay open for long. Why is cricket not a designated sport under the NSGA yet?
Q. Does BCCI’s continued RTI exemption survive the NSGA, or is that a separate legal question?
It is a separate question, and the exemption survives the Act on two independent footings. The Act, as enacted, narrowed the transparency provision so that a recognised sports body is a public authority under the Right to Information Act only in respect of its utilisation of government grants or other financial assistance.
Since the BCCI takes no government grants, the Act does not bring it within the Right to Information Act at all. Independently of the Act, the Central Information Commission held in May 2026 that the BCCI is not a “public authority” under Section 2(h) of the Right to Information Act 2005, being neither created by law nor owned, controlled or substantially financed by the Government, a ruling that followed the setting aside of the earlier 2018 Commission order.
So the BCCI remains outside the Right to Information regime on grounds that do not depend on the designation question, though it remains answerable to writ jurisdiction under Article 226 for its public functions. Designating cricket would not, by itself, place the BCCI under the Right to Information Act unless it began to take government grants.
BCCI remains outside the Right to Information regime on grounds that do not depend on the designation question, though it remains answerable to writ jurisdiction under Article 226 for its public functionsSports Lawyer Aahna MehrotraQ. Can a state association cite a Central Act (NSGA) to override its national federation’s (BCCI’s) own byelaws on elections?
Not in the way the Odisha Cricket Association is presently attempting to. While cricket is undesignated, the Act does not apply to it, so there is no operative statutory provision for the OCA to set against the BCCI Constitution.
And even after the Act applies, a state unit could not use it to override the Supreme Court-approved constitution and the Court’s binding directions, because the Act would operate through the National Sports Board and federation structure, not as a self-executing shield that lets a member defy both its federation and the Court. The order of authority is that the Supreme Court’s directions and the approved constitution sit above the OCA’s byelaws, and the Act is not yet in the cricket picture at all.
A Central Act can displace subordinate byelaws where it applies and occupies the field, but here it neither applies to cricket yet nor licenses defiance of binding Supreme Court orders, so the OCA cannot lawfully rely on it to defer polls that its own byelaws and the Court’s mandate require. That said, a separate debate may be inevitable over whether the Act can be applied to state associations at all, given that sport is a State subject under Entry 33 of the State List.
This tension was hinted at during the AIFF matter before the Supreme Court. It echoes the federalism question now before the Supreme Court in the challenge to the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025, though the parallel is inexact: betting and gambling is a long-settled State subject with decades of jurisprudence behind it, whereas the constitutional footing of a sports-governance statute is far less charted.
In any event, the Act reaches state associations only indirectly, through the national federation's duty to secure their compliance rather than by direct central command. Either way, the National Sports Federations hold a practical lever: they are free to frame their byelaws to admit only those state bodies that comply with the federation’s constitution, so a non-compliant state that tries to override the structure risks being expelled from the pyramid altogether.
The designation of sports is not a one-time window. The Central Government may notify cricket at any time by a fresh notificationSports Lawyer Aahna MehrotraQ.
Does a Sports Ministry “notice” carry statutory force if cricket isn’t a designated sport? A ministry communication, advisory or “notice” is executive in character, not statutory.
Under the Act, statutory force attaches to notifications made under it, such as one designating a sport or notifying Rules. If cricket is not a designated sport, a ministry notice, whether it urges elections under the Act or is said to permit deferral to a later date, carries no statutory force either to compel or to excuse, and cannot override the Supreme Court-approved constitution or the Court’s binding directions.
This is borne out by the Ministry’s own stated position that, pending notification of the Rules, elections could proceed under the Supreme Court-approved framework, which shows that the Ministry itself does not treat the Act as presently binding on cricket. Absent designation and a notification under the Act, a ministry notice is persuasive at most, not law.
Where does cricket stand right now as far as legal frameworks go? Q.
Could other BCCI state units (beyond OCA) now use the same “wait for NSGA clarity” argument to stall elections? That is the real risk, and it is precisely why the BCCI is pressing the OCA to hold its polls.
If deferral on a “wait for the Act, or for the Board’s circular” basis were allowed to succeed, other state units whose incumbents are approaching the two-consecutive-term, cooling-off and nine-year limits could copy the tactic to entrench themselves. But the argument is legally weak while cricket is undesignated, and there is contrary precedent within cricket itself.
During the Lodha implementation the Supreme Court’s Committee of Administrators compelled state elections and warned non-compliant units, such as Tamil Nadu and Haryana, with the loss of BCCI voting rights, and states like Maharashtra and Karnataka have held their elections under the Lodha framework. The petitioner has made exactly that point.
The recent Supreme Court development cuts against the stalling rather than for it. Its evident impatience with the unending litigation, and its interest in moving these disputes to the National Sports Tribunal, signal a push towards finality.
A show-cause on whether the Act should apply does not suspend the existing Supreme Court-approved constitution, and incumbents cannot treat the mere pendency of that question as a licence to defer. If anything, the apex court’s engagement makes an early and uniform resolution more likely, which is the opposite of what a stalling unit would want.
Q. What would meaningfully resolve this ambiguity: a formal notification, a Sports Ministry clarification, or judicial intervention?
The three are best seen as complementary rather than as alternatives, each operating at a different level:a. A formal notification designating cricket, with the BCCI’s recognition as the federation and the byelaw conformity that follows, would bring cricket under the Act’s ambit and end the “not a designated sport” argument at a stroke.
b. A Sports Ministry clarification could give administrative guidance, for instance confirming that, pending designation, associations must continue to follow the Supreme Court-approved constitution.
c. Judicial intervention is what will actually resolve the present impasse and, ultimately, the question of precedence.
Only a court can enforce the Supreme Court mandate against a unit that will not act, and adjudicate any conflict between the Act and the approved constitution, with the Supreme Court the ultimate forum given its continuing oversight of the BCCI reforms. The events of 9 September 2026 have, in effect, answered this question in favour of judicial intervention, and at the highest level.
With the Supreme Court now seized of whether cricket should come under the Act, a direction from it could resolve both the immediate impasse and the precedence question in a single stroke, and could either prompt or make redundant a separate government designation. So while a formal notification remains the cleanest structural route and a ministry clarification the weakest, the operative resolver has now plainly become the judiciary, and specifically the Supreme Court.
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