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Lalit Modi between 2010 & 2013 claimed in emails that he is close to PM Narendra Modi & BJP president Amit Shah, former Union Minister and Congress leader Kapil Sibal has said as reported by media.
Senior Congress leader, Sibal on Monday also alleged that in 2009-10, Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, who were then the president and vice-president of the Gujarat Cricket Association, respectively, sought to help industrialist Gautam Adani in his bid to own an IPL team by manipulating bids with the help of Lalit Modi. Narendra Modi is now the Prime Minister of the country and Amit Shah is the BJP president.
Sibal alleged that Lalit Modi had rigged the tender conditions to favour the industrialist Adani. He claimed that an inquiry committee under Arun Jaitley had held that the objective of Lalit Modi was to “restrict the number of bidders to favour Videocon and Adani groups”.
In a release on Monday, Sibal stated that: “Documentary evidence suggests that the then Chief Minister of Gujarat, Shri Narendra Modi along with Shri Amit Shah was apparently involved in manipulating bids with the help of Lalit Modi to ensure that the Gujarat Cricket Association with Shri Narendra Modi as president and Shri Amit Shah, his Man Friday as vice-president, favours Shri Narendra Modi’s omnipresent friend Shri Gautam Adani with an IPL franchise by imposing onerous conditions through a carefully crafted strategy.
The Adani Group/Videocon were being helped to seek a franchise for an IPL Team for Ahmedabad.” The Indian Express had reported that a disciplinary committee report submitted to the BCCI by Arun Jaitley had found Lalit Modi guilty of having indulged in ‘bid-rigging’ by favouring two specific parties,
Adani Group and Videocon, during the IPL franchise bidding process in 2010. The committee proved that the then IPL chairman had introduced two ‘unreasonable and onerous’ clauses in the final draft of the invitation to tender (ITT) without the knowledge or approval of the IPL governing council (GC) in a deliberate attempt to restrict the number of bidders.
The two contentious clauses that weren’t part of the original draft that was approved by the GC — according to the report — called for the bidder to have ‘a net worth of US$ 1 billion’ and ‘has to give a bank guarantee of Rs 460 crore’. As it turned out only two bids were received. And upon receiving complaints from other aggrieved parties — Sahara and Dainik Jagran — the BCCI decided to scrap the dubious tender on March 7, 2010.
The report states that the BCCI relied upon four witnesses to support their case, one of them being IPL CEO Sundar Raman. In his defence, Lalit Modi had backed the net worth clause by insisting that since franchises become ‘cash positive’ only in the eighth year, it was crucial that they have ‘deep pockets’. And that the bank guarantee had been sought for in the best interests of the IPL and for the stability of the league.
The News Report first Published by Indian Express
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