New Delhi:
It's ironic, perhaps, that it's still twitter that's placing Shashi Tharoor at the centre of a new controversy. This time, though, the tweets that could cause goosebumps are not his own.
Lalit Modi, the Commissioner of the Indian Premier League, has tweeted details of the stakeholders in the new Kochi IPL team that was sold on March 21 for Rs 1530 crores.
It turns out that Sunanda Pushkar, a close associate of Tharoor's, owns 18 per cent free equity of the franchise. One of the partners in the consortium is Rendezvous Sports World which was given 25 per cent of the franchise at no cost; of this 18 per cent, was gifted to Sunanda, the balance was divided among three other members of Rendezvous.
After naming Sunanda, Modi tweets that he was asked not to check the background of the controversial buyers. "I was told by him not to get into who owns Rendezvous, especially Sunanda. Why?"
When the franchise was sold, there were many questions raised by the media and others about the partnerships involved in buying this team.
Tharoor, Minister of State for External Affairs, has so far insisted that any link with the team from his home state is just that of "a mentor."
Modi says he will present a report on the issue to the IPL's governing council later this month.
Rendezvous has responded to Modi's tweets by saying that he's violating confidentiality agreements about ownership of teams.
Tharoor's tweets last year created multiple controversies. The most notorious saw him describing economy air travel as "flying cattle class" which got him into significant trouble with Congress president Sonia Gandhi and ended with the Prime Minister issuing a clarification on Tharoor's behalf. Despite that public and embarrassing episode, that came to be known as Twittergate, Tharoor then tweeted his opinions on the new visa rules that India was introducing for foreigners. His boss, SM Krishna, then made it clear that government policy matters were not to be discussed publicly.