Suspended IPL Commissioner Lalit Modi got a breather on Monday after the Cricket Board gave him five more days to respond to the first show-cause notice issued to him for alleged financial irregularities.
The BCCI decision came after Mr. Modi sought some documents from the Board to prepare his reply, though he was supposed to respond to the charge sheet by Monday.
“Lalit Modi has requested the Board President (Shashank Manohar) and Secretary (N. Srinivasan) to extend time. He was supposed to reply to the show cause notice today. The Board has taken a decision to extend time up to the 15th of May,” BCCI Chief Administrative Officer Ratnakar Shetty told reporters here.
Mr. Shetty’s announcement came soon after Mr. Modi’s lawyer Memmood S. Abdi handed over the remaining documents pertaining to the IPL which were with the suspended IPL chief.
Mr. Shetty did not want to reveal the nature of the documents that were handed over to him by Mr. Abdi. “All this is between the Board and Modi. I don’t think we need to share it with the media,” he said.
Mr. Abdi told reporters he had handed over to the Board the remaining documents that were with Mr. Modi, including minutes of IPL Governing Council meetings, bid documents, franchisee agreements and all contracts starting from 2008 onwards.
“This is the final phase of handing over of papers to the Board from our side. We had earlier submitted a bigger bulk of papers on the 8th May,” Mr. Abdi said.
“From our end we have submitted all the papers. The BCCI has not got back to us regarding any more documents as yet. We have retained one copy of whatever documents we have handed over to the Board. These have been endorsed by Shetty on behalf of the Board,” Mr. Abdi said, adding “the documents handed over to the Board today ran into thousands of pages.”
The first set of documents, both original as well as notarised copies, which Mr. Modi had submitted earlier included all franchisee agreements, global media rights agreements, global media rights packages, all bid documents, media rights licensee agreements, eligibility letters of bidders with details and sponsorship agreements entered into by IPL.
Asked about the extension of deadline given by the Board to Mr. Modi on his request to reply to the first show cause, Mr. Abdi said “there was nothing unusual about it”.
“When you reply to a show cause notice each word has to be written appropriately,” he said.
Asked when Mr. Modi would response to the second show cause notice that alleged he was planning to start a ‘rebel’ T20 league in England, Mr. Abdi said, “The deadline for the second will end in 15 days from May 6. So there’s no hurry to reply to it”.
