By IANS,
New Delhi : Minister of State for External Affairs Minister Shashi Tharoor Tuesday denied that he called up Indian Premier League (IPL) chief Lalit Modi requesting him not to reveal the name of the stakeholders of the consortium that won the franchise of the Kochi team.
Tharoor, who played the role of a mentor and helped the consortium bag the deal for Rs.1,530 crore, said in a statement that he had called up Modi to ask why he was further delaying the approval of the franchise when all the legal requirements had been fulfilled.
“Modi had held up approval by the IPL of the franchisee agreement earlier in the day by insisting on the reversal of a change in the document that he himself had earlier suggested. This change was made, the consortium members flew to Bangalore and met with Modi after that night’s IPL game for what they had been told would be a routine exercise.
“Instead they were submitted to a barrage of questions which led some to suspect that Modi was seeking a further excuse to delay approval. This was the reason for my intervention with Modi. Had he conducted himself in good faith throughout, no call would have been necessary,” Tharoor said.
Slamming Modi, Tharoor said: “The unethical efforts that have been made by Modi and others to thwart the Kerala franchise which had been won fair and square in a transparent bidding process are disgraceful.
“It has been clear for some time that the real motive is to assign this IPL team elsewhere than Kerala. All of us in Kerala hope that the Indian cricket board will not permit statements and activities which seek to discredit the Kerala team before it has even had a chance to prove its worth. The public attempts by Modi to besmirch the consortium in fact bring the IPL itself into disrepute,” he said.
Modi claimed in his tweets that he was asked not to get into who owns the Rendezvous Sports World, one of the partners in the consortium that has 25 percent of the franchise for free; of this 18 percent is given to Tharoor’s friend Sunanda Pushkar and the balance is divided among three other Rendezvous members.
“I was told by him (Tharoor) not to get into who owns rendezvous. Specially Sunanda Pushkar. Why? The same has been minuted in my records,” he tweeted.
Tharoor denied having any financial interests in the franchise.
“I repeat that I am proud to have helped the consortium come to Kerala. I have neither invested nor received a rupee for my mentorship of the team. Whatever my personal relationships with any of the consortium members, I do not intend to benefit in any way financially from my association with the team now or at a later stage,” he said.
Modi has been admonished by board president Shashank Manohar for sharing such sensitive information on the ownership of the franchise on a forum like Twitter.
Modi, however, in his mail to Manohar said: “I have minutes of what they said at the meeting. And in fact when I questioned who the shareholders were, they had no answer. In fact, they said they would revert back. Within minutes of me asking the same I got a call from Shashi Tharoor asking me not to ask about, who these shareholders are.”
“You had mentioned that we should ignore who this owner is but our condition requires us to authenticate who they are. What I have put on Twitter is in no way breach of confidentiality as who the shareholders are we have always provided in the past and it is not a matter to hide. Further, it is the Kochi franchisee who has a lot to hide and as such have lied about who are the actual owners of the shares,” Modi added in his mail.