The Lalit Modi Controversy
June 18, 2015
Published in elections.in (http://www.elections.in/blog/the-lalit-modi-controversy/)
There is no relationship whatsoever between Lalit Modi and Narendra Modi except for the common surname. They don’t even belong to the same caste. Yet, in popular parlance, it has taken a Modi to take on a Modi! If at all Prime Minister Narendra Modi faces his first ever credibility test, it is because of the man who shares his surname and in fact made it famous much before Narendra came into centre stage of public glare.
Today, Lalit Modi is not just a business honcho-turned controversial cricket administrator, but he is also wanted in 16 Enforcement Directorate cases in India. He ran away to Britain in 2010 as he faced probe into alleged foreign exchange regulation violations in the Indian Premier League tournament that he had organized in South Africa in 2009. Subsequently, the erstwhile United Progressive Alliance government had revoked his passport, and sought his extradition.
There is a humane story too Lalit’s wife suffers from Cancer and is being treated in a hospital in Lisbon in Portugal. Since the husband faced legal hurdles traveling to Portugal to see his wife who had to undergo cancer surgery, the Indian government was moved by his plight and the external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj went out of her way to ensure he got travel papers in Britain.
So wasn’t that a nice “humanitarian” gesture for an alleged fugitive? In the process what was conveniently ignored and what the ruling BJP has sought to downplay is the conflict of interest aspect since the minister’s husband Swaraj Kaushal and daughter Bansuri Swaraj represent Lalit in the courts as his advocates for, as Lalit claims, “20 and four years respectively”. What further queers the pitch are the media reports suggesting Sushma had even met Lalit in London during her official visit there in October last year. The government has denied any such meeting.
The Opposition Congress party and the Left as well have lapped up the issue to nail the government.
But this is not all. Holidaying at the picturesque Balkan nation of Montenegro on the Adriatic Sea, he is conveniently picking journalists to give or reject interviews as per his convenience. (He invited an NDTV journalist all the way to Montenegro only to say that he was advised by his lawyers not to speak).
Lalit is dropping names at the drop of the hat at present. Back home, his assertions that Swaraj is not the only politician to help her but even senior Congress leader Rajeev Shukla, Nationalist Congress Party supremo Sharad Pawar and his senior party colleague Praful Patel had helped him get travel papers (all three were ministers in the previous Manmohan Singh government), have serious political dimensions.
Besides, his close links with Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje have for once forced the BJP into back foot. The Lotus now gets into the act of “ascertaining the facts” involving Lalit’s links with Raje after the former released papers to assert that Raje had actually supported his immigration bid to Britain. Already Lalit Modi is being probed by the ED about his links with Raje’s son Dushyant Singh as his firm allegedly loaned Rs. 11.6 crore to enterprises belonging to Dushyant.
Modi now drops a bombshell alleging that Raje had even signed a statement supporting his application to the UK government for a travel document in his presence in London. Raje denied this charge- “Of course I know the (Lalit Modi) family. I have always known them…(But) I do not know what documents they are talking about.”
It is though, well chronicled how Lalit called the shots in the Rajasthan government during Raje’s first term as CM between 2003 and 2008. They reportedly fell out in December 2013, just before the Rajasthan assembly elections following Lalit’s charges that Raje’s men were selling election tickets.
Lalit’s ability to take on the politicians illustrates in no uncertain terms the disturbing issue of crony capitalism, and also the rot that the cricket administration is into in the country considering both Shukla and Pawar as well as Lalit having been part of it. Shukla and Pawar now deny charges levelled against them by Lalit, but the damage is done.
Before we dwell more on the political angle, just a little backgrounder on Lalit Modi:
Lalit Modi, a successful businessman, was the brain behind the highly popular Indian Premier League and was its first Commissioner. However, within three years of launching the IPL, he was removed over alleged acts of misconduct and indiscipline by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), which imposed a lifetime ban on him. In 2010, Lalit charged that New Zealand cricketer Chris Cairns was involved in match fixing during 2008 but this proved to be a false charge. Cairns sued him and won costs and damage in March 2012.
Lalit rubbed the previous United Progressive Alliance government the wrong way when a Twitter entry by him revealed the stakeholders of the Kochi IPL team. He had allegedly breached confidentiality agreements and this had led to the resignation of the then union minister of state for external affairs, Shashi Tharoor, from the ministry in April 2010 after Lalit ‘s disclosure that Tharoor’s friend (later wife) late Sunanda Pushkar held equity stakes in Rendezvous Sports World (RSW), while heading the consortium that owned the Kochi team.
Lalit was then suspended as chairman and Commissioner of the IPL and was slapped with a a 34-page letter stating 22 charges of impropriety against him. On Sept 6, 2013, BCCI’s three-member committee consisting of Jyotiraditya Scindia and Arun Jaitley accused Lalit of several charges of irregularities, which Modi denies. Finally, on September 25, that year, the BCCI imposed a life ban on him after a Special General Meeting held at Chennai.
Yet, after the change of government in May 2014, when the UPA was succeeded by the NDA, investigations against Lalit took a new twist when the ED claimed it had no strong evidence against Lalit in regard to financial irregularities.
Yet the Enforcement Directorate had got the passport of Lalit Modi cancelled in 2011 to which Lalit had cried of becoming a victim of political vendetta and specifically named the then Finance Minister in the UPA government, P Chidambaram. Finally, a division bench of the high court sets aside cancellation of Lalit Modi’s passport.
Giving these developments a quirky twist, Chidambaram, now demands disclosure of file notings in the MEA about who decided not to appeal against the High Court order. He was quoted in media as saying “When a division bench of the high court sets aside cancellation of Lalit Modi’s passport, who took the decision not to file an appeal in the Supreme Court. Was ED, at whose instance the passport was cancelled, consulted in the matter? Furthermore, who took the decision to issue a fresh passport to Lalit Modi? Will the government make public file notings?”
Lalit claims he has done “nothing wrong” and was actually “taken to task by government in the past” and “it made my life miserable for no reason”.
On the political front though, he has ruffled quite a many feathers as of now. Unlike Sushma, who has the backing of the party for her “humanitarian” approach, Raje is left to fend for herself by her party as of now.
Yet, the episode doesn’t close down here as both leaders need to emerge clean of the present dubious deals. Reports suggest that Prime Minister Modi’s support to Sushma on the Lalit issue is more out of political compulsions than anything else since Sushma, a well-known dissenter within the government, could well emerge as a powerful rallying point of all dissenters if thrown out of the government.
Compulsions guide today’s politics. But one thing is clear. None can dispute that Lalit Modi indeed is a quintessential ladykiller!
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