Thaindian News

Mumbai, June 25 (IANS) The Governing Council of Indian Premier League (IPL) has found out “major irregularities” during the tenure of Lalit Modi as chairman of IPL, GC member Farooq Abdullah said after a meeting of the IPL board members here Friday.
“The various problems that IPL has gone through were put forward and decisions were taken. We found out major irregularities that have been committed by the past chairman and discussed what will be done and how we would proceed further,” Abdullah said.

Abdullah indicated that it was after the second team auction, when the Kochi and Pune franchises were added, that the GC were convinced that Modi was influencing the process.

“We were briefed about the mistakes he committed. We hope that people would come to know much more as to what has transpired in various things. How various franchisees were added and how irregularities were done,” he said.

BCCI has convened a Special General Body meeting July 3 to hear Modi’s case.

Abdullah, who is also the president of the Jammu and Kashmir Cricket Association, said the counter-charges that Modi has made against board secretary N. Srinivasan in his showcause reply will be looked into in the meeting.

“Whatever charges and counter-charges have been made, the BCCI has a mechanism whereby the General Body would meet. Mr Modi has made a number of charges but I think many of these things would be cleared when the committee meets.”

Srinivasan said that the members were briefed about the three show cause notices issued to Modi and his replies.

Meanwhile, BCCI and MSM Satellite (Singapore) Pte. Ltd (MSM), the broadcasters of the IPL, have restructured their media rights agreement in order to recover the Rs.425 crore facilitation fee that MSM paid to World Sports Group (Mauritius) as compensation for WSG relinquishing the telecast rights for the Indian subcontinent before the second season of the league in 2009.

“Today, the governing council of the IPL had approved an amended Media Rights Agreement with MSM Satellite (Singapore) Pte. Ltd in which MSM would agreed to pay the balance payable under the Facilitation Fee Agreement to the BCCI,” Srinivisan said in a statement.

“Thus, they have agreed to pay Rs.300 crore as part of the rights fee to BCCI. MSM Satellite (Singapore) is taking steps to recover Rs.125 crore already paid to WSG Mauritius and on recovery, will pay the same to BCCI.”

MSM said in a statement that “the BCCI has disclosed certain facts, hitherto not known to MSMS that confirm that the broadcast rights were exclusively with it (the BCCI) immediately prior to and at the time of the grant of the rights by BCCI to MSMS.”

The board had maintained it had no prior knowledge of the facilitation fee agreement.