NCP in eye of IPL cyclone

NEW DELHI: NCP leader Sharad Pawar has been put on the defensive following allegations of his family’s involvement in the IPL bidding process.

What started as a Shashi Tharoor-Lalit Modi stand-off over the identity of the Kochi franchisee stakeholders, threatens to envelope NCP, key ally of Congress, both at the Centre and in Maharashtra. It brought to the fore the simmering tension in ties between the two parties.

Mr Pawar and party colleague Praful Patel, who holds independent charge of the civil aviation ministry, are, for the moment, clearly on the back-foot. As the media spotlight turned on them, they had a tough time advertising their innocence.

Ms Supriya Sule, the Baramati MP who is also Mr Pawar’s daughter, denied that any of her family members, including her husband, had a role in any of the IPL franchisees, Mr Pawar tersely told newspersons that he was not a member of the IPL committee.

Mr Patel, however, was more vocal, as he pit the blame for dragging the names of NCP leaders in the controversy on ``a section of Congress leaders,’’ laying bare the growing unease in the ties between the two UPA partners.

``Congress per se is not involved in the controversy, but a section of it is spreading a slanderous campaign against me,’’ the civil aviation minister, who is also the NCP general secretary, told newspersons outside Parliament on Tuesday.

``I am happy that the government has ordered a probe into it and now the truth will come out. I have nothing to do with IPL, this I can assure you,’’ Mr Patel added.

The NCP brass is clearly jittery, as reports surfaced that the bid documents of Venugopal Dhoot’s Videocon Group, which has been eluding income-tax officials along with the bid papers presented by Gujarat-based Adani Group, had promised sweat equity to Mr Pawar’s son-in-law if it won the Pune IPL franchise. As it turned out, both the Videocon and Adani Groups failed in their attempts to secure the franchise rights for the new IPL teams.

The two groups were the front-runners for bagging the Pune (Videocon) and Ahmedabad (Adani) franchises of the IPL in the first round of bidding conducted on March 7 in Mumbai. However, with allegations of favouritism cropping up, the bidding process was cancelled. BCCI chief Shashank Manohar spoke of the unfair auction conditions in the first round, which included clauses such huge bank guarantees, and called for a new round of bidding. The two groups were unable to win the auctions in round two of bidding. With the auction conditions relaxed, a lesser known player such as the Rendezvous consortium won the Kochi bid, while the Pune franchise went to the Sahara Group.