The controversy over the ownership of the Kochi IPL consortium seemed to assume the scale of a bitter war on Tuesday, with team franchisee Rendezvous Sports World filing a complaint with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), alleging breach of trust by IPL chairman and commissioner Lalit K. Modi.
“It is unfortunate to note that Mr. Modi himself has disclosed various vital aspects of the contract on Monday evening,” the complaint, written by co-owner of the franchise Vivek Venugopal to BCCI president Shashank Manohar, said.
The letter said: “Information disclosed include shareholding pattern of the consortium as well as shareholding patterns of various participating consortium member companies. Please note that Mr. Modi has not disclosed such information for the other nine teams participating in the league. In addition, we have been seeing various remarks by Mr. Modi questioning the capability and the intentions of this consortium.
“As a consortium, we have abided by the terms and conditions of the bid document and franchise agreement in letter and in spirit. Behaviour and actions as conducted by Mr. Modi brings complete disrespect to the sport, the IPL league, as well as to the sanctity of the bidding process.”
The letter, which cited the confidentiality clause in the franchise agreement, sought Mr. Manohar's immediate intervention. “On behalf of the consortium, I sincerely request you to immediately instruct Mr. Modi to retract his statements… and apologise for the communications given in the media. We, as a consortium, are also contemplating legal action against Mr. Modi for his irresponsible behaviour, which brings disrepute to his office,” it said.
Modi's tweet
On Monday, within 17 minutes, Mr. Modi used popular social networking platform Twitter to reveal details, including the stock options held by the members of the consortium that won the bid for the Kochi franchise of the IPL at the March 21 auction in Chennai.
He started with the tweet, “A lot of you are asking about the shareholders and events surrounding the Kochi team. I am compiling a note shortly and will put out a press release soon.” He went on to add: “Twenty five per cent of Kochi team is given free to Rendezvous Sports for life. The same equity is non-dilutable in perpetuity. What does that mean? Why? Wait.” He then tweeted again: “Will disclose those details soon.”
Keeping his promise, he then quite dramatically wrote: “Who are the shareholders of Rendezvous? And why have they been given this 100s of million dollars bonanza? Kochi shareholders are Rendezvous 25 per cent [free]; Rendezvous 1 per cent; Anchor 27 per cent; Parinee 26 per cent; Film Waves Combine 12 per cent; Anand Shyam 8 per cent; Vivek Venugopal 1 per cent.”
He went on to reveal more: “Rendezvous free equity – held by Kisan, Shailendra and Pushpa Gaikwad, Sunanda Pushkar, Puja Gulati, Jayant Kotalwar, Vishnu Prasad, Sundip Agarwal.”
Minutes later, Mr. Modi tweeted again in reply to a query from a fellow tweeter. “A big? I was told by him not to get into who owns Rendezvous. Especially Sunanda Pushkar. Why? The same has been minuted in my records.”
