Glare on Narendra Modi aide’s meet

Glare on Narendra Modi aide’s meet

Narendra Modi Ahmedabad, April 15: Lalit Modi and Narendra Modi’s home minister Amit Shah had last month asked industrialist Gautam Adani to bid for an Ahmedabad IPL team, Shah confirmed today hours after the Kochi franchise claimed to be the victim of a Modi-Modi nexus. Shah’s statement came amid widespread suspicion that Lalit Modi was out to get the Kochi franchise disqualified so that Ahmedabad could have its own IPL team — a dream nurtured by Narendra Modi ever since he became Gujarat Cricket Association (GCA) president. Shah had met Adani (along with Lalit Modi) in the Motera stadium in his capacity as GCA vice-president. Adani announced his decision to bid for an Ahmedabad team the day after the meeting, which took place sometime before the aborted March 9 IPL auction that was followed by a successfully hosted one on March 21. Kochi franchise spokesperson Satyajit Gaikwad today alleged that Lalit Modi was targeting his team under pressure from Narendra Modi and former Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje. Both Narendra Modi and Raje are in the BJP, and Lalit Modi was very close to Raje when she was in power. “Vasundhara and Narendra Modi may have put pressure on Lalit (Modi) to bring a team to Ahmedabad. There is politics involved,” Gaekwad said. Shah dismissed the allegation, blaming it “on a clever ploy by our political rivals to link Lalit Modi and Narendra Modi”. But if the Kochi franchise is disqualified, Shah was asked, would he want its promoters to shift their base to Ahmedabad? “It is a hypothetical question which I will not like to answer,” the minister replied. He was asked whether some promoters of the Kochi IPL team had met Narendra Modi. The allusion was to reports that some of these promoters — many of them with links to Gujarat — had offered to pull their money out of the Kochi team and invest in an Ahmedabad team. “I’m not aware of any such meeting,” Shah said. Vipul Shah, the Mumbai-based real estate developer who holds a 35 per cent stake in the Kochi team, too denied the allegation. “It is all media speculation, nothing else. No substance,” he said, ruling out withdrawing from the Kochi franchise and adding that he had not met Narendra Modi on this issue. Gaikwad had earlier said: “We were told that we won’t be allowed to work. The Adani group and Narendra Modi had a stake in the Ahmedabad IPL bid. After we won the bid, our investors spoke to (former BCCI chief) Sharad Pawar and asked him which city to choose. He said, ‘You can take your pick’, so we decided to take Kochi.” Former GCA president Narhari Amin, a Congress leader, confirmed that “both Modis were very keen” to get an IPL team for Ahmedabad. “But they failed. Primarily because both Narendra Modi and Amit Shah are novices in this game,” he said. Amin added that if they had sought his advice, he would have told them to draft a few more industrial houses and raise the bidding amount by a few hundred crores.