Exit Tweety, Sylvester next?

HT informs us of the exit of the unlamented Tweety:

The Shashi Tharoor controversy is a closed chapter, the Congress and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said on Monday, a day after he resigned as minister of state for external affairs over the Indian Premier League (IPL) row.
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Tharoor, 54, a former top UN official, submitted his resignation to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in a nearly half-hour meeting, the second one on Sunday.

The resignation came soon after top Congress leaders held a meeting with the prime minister and party president Sonia Gandhi and concluded that Tharoor had to go.
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On Friday, Tharoor had put up a spirited defence of himself in the Lok Sabha, claiming he had done no wrong and not used his office to promote the interest of close friend Sunanda Pushkar. The Dubai-based businesswoman had got a sweat equity worth Rs.70 crore in Rendezvous Sports World, a member of the consortium that won the IPL Kochi franchise.

The first head to have gone for a six. Unfortunately, this ball bounces back. The cat who swallowed the canary is not looking too happy either, if NDTV is to be believed:

Sources have told NDTV that Lalit Modi will be sacked as Indian Premier League (IPL) chief and action against him is likely at the IPL governing council meet to be held soon.

The sources said BCCI president Shashank Manohar is likely to take over as IPL chairman.

Modi will face charges for arm-twisting franchises. Tharoor had alleged that Modi delayed signing the Kochi tender for a month.

There is also some bad news for all IPL owners. The government will probe the source of funds of all teams and possible foreign exchange violations.

Meanwhile the direct beneficary of Tharoor’s alleged impropriety is not getting off easy either, ET informs us:

Sunanda Pushkar, friend of junior foreign minister Shashi Tharoor, may run into a legal wall over her offer to surrender sweat equity in Rendezvous Sports World, say lawyers. For one, there is no provision under the sweat equity rules for a company to take back the stake, says a lawyer who did not wish to be named.

The issuance of sweat equity is itself under a cloud, he adds, as the rules stipulate that Indian companies can issue it only a year after incorporation. Rendezvous Sports World has reportedly been incorporated in August 2009. “Prima facie, the very allotment of sweat equity is flawed. Where is the question of cancelling it? If the guidelines have not been followed then allotment is itself invalid,” says Abhishek Saxena, partner in Phoneix Legal, a corporate law firm.