M A I N   N E W S

Tharoor-Modi tweet war hots up
Ashok Tuteja
Tribune News service

Minister says Modi pressurised Rendezvous to abandon bid for Kochi team BCCI to sort out issue in 10 days

New Delhi, April 13
The public showdown between IPL chief Lalit Modi and Union Minister Shashi Tharoor over the Kochi team’s stake-holding structure is snowballing into a major controversy.

Hitting back at Modi, Tharoor today denied that he had called up the IPL boss to request him not to reveal the name of the stakeholders of the consortium that won the franchise of the Kochi team. Tharoor said 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.

File photo of Shashi Tharoor, Minister of State for External Affairs with Sunanda Pushkar.

He alleged that Modi had made attempts to pressurise the winning consortium — Rendezvous — to abandon their bid for the Kerala outfit. “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,” Tharoor said.

Voicing his displeasure at the turn of events which saw him pitted against Lalit Modi, Tharoor tweeted: “I have had enough. Rendezvous includes a number of people including many I have never met, and Sunanda Pushkar, whom I know well.” Tharoor is reportedly planning to marry Sunanda. Rendezvous bought the franchise for the IPL Kochi team for $ 333 million.

In his tweet yesterday, Modi had not only publicly disclosed the names of the owners of the consortium that bought the franchisee but had also alleged that he was told by Tharoor not to ask who these shareholders were.

The BCCI has decided to convene a meeting of the IPL Governing Council within 10 days to discuss and take a decision on the episode.

“The Board president has decided to convene an IPL Governing Council meeting within 10 days to discuss all the issues and take a decision,” BCCI spokesman Rajiv Shukla told reporters after a meeting with Congress president Sonia Gandhi at her residence.

Shukla, who maintained that her meeting with Sonia Gandhi had nothing to do with the Tharoor issue, said: “What ever allegations have been made from both the sides, all those issues will be deliberated upto at the meeting of the Governing Council. I don’t want to make a comment or any observation on what one has said against the other. All I was trying to suggest that all these issues will be discussed in the meeting convened by the BCCI chief.”

Asked whether he had a discussion with Sonia Gandhi on Tharoor’s role in the IPL Kochi team, Shukla said, “I had no discussion with Sonia Gandhi on this issue.”

Tharoor’s aides say the youthful minister was being targeted once again by powerful politicians in his own Congress party through the IPL chief as well as a section of the media. An attempt is also being made to bring his private life into disrepute by dragging Pushkar’s association with the IPL team ‘unnecessarily’ into the limelight. Pushkar is believed to be the third woman in 54-year-old Tharoor’s life. This is not the first time that Tharoor has attracted the headlines. His tweeting habit has already seen him courting trouble on quite a few occasions. His ‘cattle class’ comments in the context of his own government’s austerity drive, disagreement with its stricter visa rules and sometime back comments over the foreign policy legacy of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru not only earned him the wrath of Congress bigwigs but also saw many senior leaders demanding his removal from the government.