I-T officials raid IPL office, grill Modi

Indian Premier League commissioner Mr Lalit Modi was quizzed by a team of Income Tax officials, who were seeking details of the funds raised by different franchisees of the IPL on Thursday.

With this latest development, which is seen as a fall-out of the battle between Mr Modi and the minister of state for external affairs, Mr Shashi Tharoor, the mentor of the Kochi franchise, sources said the BCCI has decided to clip Mr Modi’s wings and appoint BCCI president as the co-chairman of the IPL.

Earlier during the day, a team of I-T officials had “visited” four offices of the Indian Premiere League at different places in Mumbai including its headquarters at the Board of Control for Cricket in India’s office.

I-T officials were quick to dismiss these “visits” as raids and said that they were just “collecting and checking” documents from the IPL, to check the records of the franchises and the organisation itself. However, the fact that the I-T officials also took their own forensics team to check the documents, indicated that the I-T department meant business. The forensic team was taken to check whether any of the documents were fudged or if the accounts genuine.

While one of the offices was the BCCI headquarters, Mr Modi’s office at Four Seasons Hotel and another unidentified place in Bandra and Mahalaxmi were among other places visited by I-T officials.

The “visits” were conducted under Section 131 of the I-T Act. At the time of going to press, one of the I-T teams was still questioning Mr Modi in his office. Sources in the I-T department said that Thursday’s events were just a precursor and the documents would be studied and passed on to the relevant departments.

“The Enforcement Directorate and Department of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) will also be involved if it is suspected that money invested here was done through fraudulent means like money laundering, hawala transactions or simply converting black money into white.”

Senior I-T officials refused to comment on the developments or whether the “visits” and “inquiries” had anything to do with the full-blown fight between Mr Modi and Mr Tharoor.

In a related development, a senior NCP leader, on condition of anonymity, dismissed the speculation that the NCP chief, Mr Sharad Pawar, has anything to do with the issue. He alleged that “Tharoor’s aides” are resorting to such things because they want to score some brownie points within the Congress by speaking against the NCP and Gujarat Chief Minister, Mr Narendra Modi.

He said who met whom and others are not core issues. “The core issue is — for what reason was the sweat equity allotted to Sunanda Pushkar and others? There are others also whose names have come to the fore. For what they are getting it?” he said.

The IPL Kochi franchise spokesperson, Mr Satyajit Gaekwad, said “We were told that we won’t be allowed to work. The Adani Group and Mr Narendra Modi had a stake in the Ahmedabad IPL bid. After we won the bid, our investors spoke to Mr Pawar and asked him which city to choose. He said, ‘You can take your pick’ so we decided to take Kochi.”