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Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Pawar asks Lalit Modi to step down



NEW DELHI: Giving in to pressure, former BCCI chief Sharad Pawar on Tuesday agreed to ask Lalit Modi to step down as IPL Commissioner. BCCI president Shashank Manohar will take over as IPL chief.

Modi is likely to quit after the final of the Twenty20 extravaganza as BCCI will set up an internal probe to look into the IPL fiasco.

Modi will hand over his resignation to the Governing Council in its meeting on April 26.

A top BCCI source indicated that Modi would be asked to step down from the post at the Council meeting in Mumbai and Pawar has also given his consent to the move.

"It will be in the best interest of the IPL and the BCCI that he steps down from the post. But if he does not do so, the Governing Council may be forced to pass a resolution against him to remove him," the source said.

"There is near unanimity within the Board that Modi has to go. He has no choice now. It is the only logical conclusion," the source said.

Although there was no official word on what exactly transpired during the Manohar-Pawar meeting, the statement that "unanimous and collective" decision will be taken by the Council is being interpreted as strong indication of the impending doom for the high-flying Modi.

Significantly, Pawar had a meeting with Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and the Home Minister P Chidambaram in the morning before being closeted with Manohar.

Manohar then had a meeting with Media and Finance Committee chairman Rajiv Shukla and DDCA President and senior BJP leader Arun Jaitely to discuss the issue.

Earlier, sources said the cricket board members are miffed with Modi and the controversies surrounding him. The sources also added that the board members consider the present controversy as the biggest the BCCI has ever faced.

The BCCI top officials are said to be extremely unhappy with Modi after he triggered the controversy by tweeting the Kochi franchise's stakeholding pattern, which also brought the cricket board under the Income Tax department's scanner.

Modi himself is under fire for allegedly helping his family and friends buy stakes in various IPL teams.

His tweets about Kochi's shareholding created a political storm as it emerged that minister of state for external affair Shashi Tharoor's close friend Sunanda Pushkar had a sweat equity worth Rs 70 crore. Tharoor had to resign, while Pushkar also gave up her stake in Kochi franchise.

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