New Delhi:
Lalit Modi will not attend the meeting on Monday where the agenda is to ask him to quit as Chairman of the Indian Premier League (IPL).
On the 26th, the Governing Council of the IPL is scheduled to meet to discuss the diaspora of grievances - behavioral and financial - against the Chairman.
Modi has said Monday's meeting cannot be called without his consent as Chairman. In an email sent to the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), he writes that he needs more time to prepare his defense because he is busy with the final rounds of IPL matches (the final is this Sunday).
(Read Modi's e-mail)The BCCI, which is the mother ship of Indian cricket, has said that the vote to remove Modi will be held on Monday even if he is not present.
Unofficially, Modi has already begun presenting his defense. On Wednesday, emails released to the media showed that Modi had tried to persuade the BCCI to publicly reveal the details of all the stakeholders in the IPL.
(Read:Lalit Modi takes on BCCI with e-mails)Modi pointed out that his request was rejected, among others, by Shashank Manohar, the BCCI Chief, who is also slated to take over as IPL Chairman if Modi is fired.
On Thursday, Manohar told NDTV that going public with the ownership details would have violated confidentiality agreements. Manohar says he told Modi, "There are legal implications in this regard, we have to look to the documents which we have never seen in our life, and that is why we will discuss all this issue in detail at the governing council meeting. Because, if required, we had to take legal opinion in that regard." Manohar added, "It's fine for him to leak these mails...and a thing which we had not done for 2 years."
Manohar also slammed Modi for not being entirely forthcoming about his alleged different links with IPL teams, three of which are partly owned by Modi's friends and family members. When NDTV pointed out that the BCCI Secretary, N Srinivasan, is the sole owner of the Chennai team, Manohar said that Srinivasan had sought the appropriate clearances before bidding for the Chennai Super-Kings.
Modi has been credited widely with single-handedly creating the IPL, a billion dollar league, an unparalleled marriage of glamour, movie stars, cricket players and entertainment. He is also being blamed for throwing the league and its powerful and rich owners into a governmental nationwide tax inquiry. Modi's tweets, earlier this month, which in hindsight may seem feckless even to him, listed the owners of the Kochi team.
The group that had won that franchise had then-minister Shashi Tharoor as their mentor. His girlfriend, Sunanda Pushkar, was also mentioned in tweets by Modi, for receiving equity worth 70 crores, without investing a penny. Under gigantic pressure from the Opposition, Tharoor was forced to resign from government.
Since then, the Finance Minister has vowed in Parliament to uncover the financial underground of what's seen by many as a chronically venal sport, one that has proxy owners, undeclared foreign investment and kickbacks.