Published>Tue, Apr 13 10 12:11 PM
Indian Premier League ( IPL) commissioner Lalit Modi's tweet revealing the identities of the owners of Rendezvous Sports World, the consortium that had snapped up the Kochi IPL team for $ 333 million ( Rs 1,533 crore), has triggered a threat of legal action from the people he has named.
One name particularly - that of Sunanda Pushkar - has got tongues wagging. Pushkar was seen sharing a sofa in the front row with minister of state for external affairs Shashi Tharoor at the launch of the former Punjab chief minister, Capt. Amarinder Singh's book, The Last Sunset: The Rise and Fall of the Lahore Durbar , in Delhi on March 4.
Who is Pushkar? Why does she have "free equity" to the tune of 4.9 per cent in Rendezvous? These are the questions that are doing the rounds of the cocktail circuit. And Modi's cryptic remark in his reply to one of the responses to his Rendezvous tweet - "I was told by him not to get into who owns Rendezvous. Specially Sunanda Pushkar. Why? The same has been minuted in my records" - has set off a frenetic guessing game on the mysterious " him". Sources close to Tharoor - who categorically denied media reports of Pushkar becoming the third Mrs Tharoor - said she had been a promoter of Rendezvous from the time the consortium had started working on the bid two years back for a team in the world's most lucrative cricket league.
Pushkar, they said, is with the Dubai government agency, TECOM Investments, which is behind projects in the emirate such as Media City, Internet City and Knowledge Village. Her profile on the business networking site LinkedIn shows that she has been working as a sales manager with TECOM since 2005. She also shows up in pictures of high- society parties in Dubai.
Pushkar, the sources said, is the daughter of a senior Army officer and she lost her husband - who was from Kerala - 14 years back. She has a 17- year- old son and divides her time between Dubai and Delhi.
The other holders of free equity in the Kochi IPL team, according to Modi, are Shailendra and Pushpa Gaikwad, Puja Gulati, Jayant Kotalwar, Vishnu Prasad and Sundip Agarwal. Little is known about them, except that they are good friends of Vivek Venugopal, a promoter of Rendezvous. US- educated Venugopal is from the family that owns Elite Group, a 45- year- old Kerala company that is into a diversified range of activities, from producing instant food mixes to real estate and construction. His mother's family owns Cholayil, makers of Medimix soaps and Cuticura talcum powder.
The Rendezvous promoters, according to sources close to Tharoor, are planning to initiate legal action against Modi for violating the non- disclosure clause in the agreement they had inked with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on Saturday.
Asked to confirm if the Rendezvous promoters had sent a notice to the BCCI headquarters, board secretary N. Srinivasan said: "I don't know; I have no idea. I am in the temple town of Kumbakonam, near Tiruchirapalli." And did IPL rules allow any of its governing council members or any BCCI official to disclose the names of IPL franchise owners? Srinivasan replied: "I'll have to check the facts. You call me tomorrow morning and I will tell you."
Another BCCI office- bearer, who is also a member of the IPL governing council, however, was certain Modi had transgressed the line. "He had no business disclosing the names," he said on the condition of anonymity.
Reacting to reports of the legal notice being contemplated against Lalit Modi, Jacob Joseph, Tharoor's officer on special duty, asked: "Why doesn't he disclose the holding pattern of Rajasthan Royals?" Tharoor, he confirmed, had used his political skills to make the consortium viable (to bid for the Kochi IPL team).
Joseph rejected media reports that suggested Pushkar was set to become the third Mrs Tharoor. "She's just a good friend," Joseph said. "If the minister had to choose between Jacob Joseph and Sunanda Pushkar to accompany him to a public function, he'll naturally choose her."
At the Amarinder Singh book release, Pushkar was with Tharoor in the front row, in the company of Congress leaders such as Virbhadra Singh, Mohsina Kidwai, Jayanthi Natarajan and Manish Tiwari. She came dressed in a Chinese collar blouse with a purple diaphanous designer sari and sported a Franck Muller watch.
Joseph clarified that Tharoor's marriage with his New- York based second wife, Christa Giles, a United Nations official whom he had met during his stint at the world body, was "experiencing a lot of pain because of physical separation". They wedded in 2007.
MODISPEAK
On March 21,2010
Tharoor is an ardent fan of the game who wanted a team from Kochi. His role ends here
On April 11
I was told by him not to get into who owns Rendezvous. Specially Sunanda Pushkar. Why?
Reproduced From Mail Today. Copyright 2010. MTNPL. All rights reserved.
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