New Delhi, April 13: Minister of state for external affairs Shashi Tharoor on Tuesday hit back at IPL commissioner Lalit Modi, alleging he had made attempts to pressure the winning consortium to abandon their bid for the Kerala outfit.

“I deny Mr Lalit Modi’s allegation that I called him during his meeting with investors in the Kochi consortium in Bangalore on Saturday night in order to press him not to question the composition of the consortium,” Mr Tharoor said. On the question of his interests in the franchise, Mr Tharoor said he was 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,” he added.
“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 BCCI 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 Mr Modi to besmirch the consortium in fact bring the IPL itself into disrepute,” he claimed.
[The BCCI plans to assemble its governing council to discuss and take a decision on the matter. It will go into all the allegations and counter-allegations made by both sides, Mr Rajiv Shukla was quoted as saying by PTI.]
In a statement, the minister trained his guns on the powerful cricket board official, alleging that various attempts were made by Mr Modi and others to pressure the members of the consortium to abandon their bid in favour of another city in a different state. According to reports, Ahmedabad was being mentioned as the other city.
[According to a top BCCI source, Mr Modi’s tweets have not gone down well with the BCCI top brass. After receiving a complaint from the Kochi franchise, BCCI president Shashank Manohar wrote to Mr Modi criticising his decision to make public the ownership details. “The issue, if any, could have been discussed at the governing council meeting and that action on your part of raising it on Twitter is unbecoming of you as a chairman of a sub-committee of the board. Your action is in serious breach of the confidentiality clause in the agreement,” Mr Manohar wrote. “Till date, you have made public statements about a lot of issues which were not even discussed in the meetings of the governing council when it is the governing council which has the authority to take decisions with regard to each and every issue related to IPL,” Mr Manohar said.
[Mr Modi, on his part, responded to Mr Manohar’s letter by saying his revelations on Twitter were “in no way a breach of confidentiality”. He claimed the Kochi franchise “had a lot to hide” and as such have lied about who are the actual owners of the shares. PTI quoted a source as saying the governing council could meet on April 23 or 24.
Mr Tharoor also said on Twitter on Tuesday, “I have had enough.” “Rendezvous includes a number of people, including many I have never met, and Sunanda Pushkar, whom I know well,” he said. Rendezvous won the franchise for the IPL Kochi team for $333 million. The value of the stake owned by Ms Sunanda Pushkar is reportedly about $16 million.
Mr  Tharoor said he was issuing the statement in a personal capacity to respond to the allegations made against him personally. He said Rendezvous bid successfully in an open and transparent process. “Their unexpected success upset the plans of a lot of  powerful people, who had wanted the franchise to go elsewhere,” he added. “Mr Modi raised assorted objections to the bid documents but finally had no choice but to approve them,” he said.
Mr Tharoor alleged that Mr Modi’s extraordinary breach of all propriety in publicly  raising issues relating to the composition of the consortium, and himself personally, is clearly an attempt to discredit the  team and create reasons to disqualify it so that the franchise can be awarded elsewhere.
The minister also emphatically said he did not intend to benefit financially in any way from his association with the Kochi team now or at a later stage. “My role in mentoring the consortium included several conversations with Mr Lalit Modi, who guided us through the process and presented himself as a trusted friend,” he said.
A consortium led by Rendezvous was set up to bid for an IPL team, he said, adding that they approached him for help and guidance. “I steered them towards Kerala,” Mr Tharoor said.
The minister said “contemptible efforts” have been made to drag in matters of personal life which “I do not intend to dignify by commenting on them”. He said he called Mr Modi to ask why he was further delaying the approval of the franchise when all the legal requirements had been fulfilled. “Mr 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 Mr 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 Mr Modi was seeking a further excuse to delay approval. This was the reason for my intervention with Mr Modi. Had he conducted himself in good faith throughout, no call would have been necessary.”
The Shashi Tharoor-Lalit Modi standoff reached the Supreme Court on Tuesday with a petition seeking a CBI probe into the Union minister’s alleged proxy stakes in the Rs 1,533-crore franchise won by the consortium Rendezvous. Alternatively, the petition urged the top court to constitute a special investigation team to probe the allegations.  Petitioner Ajay K. Agrawal, an advocate, alleged that the minister of state for external affairs had used his official position to help get 19 per cent of the stake, pegged at around Rs 70 crores, free to Ms Sunanda Pushkar whom Mr Tharoor has reportedly decided to marry. Mr Agrawal said he would make a plea before the Supreme Court on Thursday seeking an early hearing of the petition.

Age Correspondent      
with agency inputs