Politics over cricket

The Chandigarh Tribune as usual does a very thorough story:

A number of agencies have begun to probe the functioning of the Indian Premier League. Apart from bodies under the Finance Ministry like the Enforcement Directorate and the Income Tax department, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs has also joined the investigations.

The Registrar of Companies has, under the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, sent queries to all the franchise owners seeking among other things information on shareholders of the companies holding shares in the teams. According to sources in the Registrar of Companies, replies sent in by the franchise owners would be scrutinised and books of accounts and memoranda of association of these entities would also be examined in the coming days. Another agency that has been drawn into the probe is the Serious Frauds Investigations Office, which was set up shortly after the Satyam scandal two years ago. The SFIO is looking into the background of the investors and holding companies who have invested money into the IPL franchises.

Among the allegations against the IPL franchisees include benami share-holding by politicians and senior BCCI officials and routing of slush funds and unaccounted money. While the Rendezvous Sports World, which won the Kochi franchise is already under probe, the source of funds by other franchisees will also be looked into, according to sources.

Meanwhile, the Centre is poised to invoke the Indo-Mauritius treaty to obtain information on investors who routed funds via this tax haven, according to sources. The Income Tax department will seek information on the grounds that money laundering may have taken place with money taken out of the country via the hawala route being brought back via Mauritius. Shares in at least three of the franchisees are held by a complex web of entities spread over various countries like Mauritius, Bahamas, Macau, Cayman Islands and Nigeria, preliminary investigations indicate.

National newspapers should learn the art of writing from the Chandigarh Tribune.

The TOI group of papers report that the IPL sleaze is now oozing over the junior party in the ruling coalition: the NCP and its headman Sharad Pawar (who happens to be the head of the BCCI). Here is the main report from ET:

NCP leader Sharad Pawar has been put on the defensive following allegations of his family’s involvement in the IPL bidding process.

What started as a Shashi Tharoor-Lalit Modi stand-off over the identity of the Kochi franchisee stakeholders, threatens to envelope NCP, key ally of Congress, both at the Centre and in Maharashtra. It brought to the fore the simmering tension in ties between the two parties.

ET carries a story which explains why all this speculation about the NCP’s involvement:

Tax officials who searched the offices of IPL and its commissioner Lalit Modi were unable to find any documents relating to the bids of the Videocon and Adani groups, The Times of India reported on Tuesday. This has led to intense speculation that there has been an attempt to cover up who really were the entities behind the bid to acquire the new franchisees.

But the owners of both industrial houses rubbished these rumours. Videocon chairman Venugopal Dhoot said he is in possession of the bid documents relating to both the rounds of IPL bids and is ready to provide them to the authorities. “We are ready to co-operate with the authorities since we are perfectly on the right side of the law. We have done nothing illegal. We can provide the documents within 24 hours,” Mr Dhoot said.
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Modi’s tweets questioning the ownership of the Kochi consortium was under pressure from these “powerful people” who wanted the team to go elsewhere, Mr Tharoor had suggested.

The recovery of the original bid documents should settle the controversy about those who were behind these losing bids.

There has been speculation that Sadanand Sule, who is married to NCP leader and Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar’s daughter Supriya Sule, was part of the Videocon consortium for Pune. Mr Dhoot denied this. “Why would Sadanand Sule need me? If such a big man was with me, then I would not have lost the bid,” he said.
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Media reports had also suggested that Union civil aviation minister Praful Patel was involved with a bid to acquire an IPL team.

Mr Patel told ET that this was completely baseless. “This is absolutely ridiculous. I have never been part of the IPL bidding process at all, whether it was round one or round two. This is a completely baseless allegation and I hope a probe actually takes place that will belie all these misconcep-tions that have been created.”

Sister publication, TOI, carries yet another unverified story about the NCP:

Cash-strapped Congress-led Democratic Front government in Maharashtra has suffered a whopping loss of over Rs 500 crore owing to its failure to impose entertainment tax on IPL matches.

A senior Maharashtra minister on Tuesday admitted that owing to chinks in Congress and NCP, the state government was unable to take a decision on imposing entertainment tax on IPL matches. ‘‘Congress is in favour of the tax, while NCP is opposed to it: as a result, the state is incurring huge financial loss,’’ he said.

The net result is reported by BS:

A beleaguered Lalit Modi was reported to have lost the backing of Union minister and Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) heavyweight Sharad Pawar and may be out as Indian Premier League (IPL) commissioner when the IPL Governing Council meets in Mumbai on April 26.

Amid mounting pressure from detractors within and outside BCCI to ease him out, indications emerged that Modi may have to quit the post. Members are likely to ask him to voluntarily give up the position, given the raging controversy that now surrounds the financing of the hugely popular cricket league.

Apr 23

HT reports:

While the Income Tax department and Enforcement Directorate officials on Thursday zeroed in on two key money transfers related to the Indian Premier League, the Board of Control for Cricket in India set about examining all the major deals Lalit Modi has entered into as IPL chairman.

The I-T department and ED are looking into two transactions of $10.27 million and $15.3 million, remitted from the Development Bank of Singapore to a bank account in Mauritius. The money was remitted by Multi Screen Media from Singapore to the World Sport Group (WSG), Mauritius in two installments in April and June last year.

Both agencies are closely connected to the IPL. The WSG has won television rights for IPL for 10 years, while the MSM – owning channel Set Max – is the official broadcaster.
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WSG had originally bagged IPL TV rights for 10 years starting 2008 with a bid of $918 million (Rs 4200 crore) and a commitment to spend another $108 million ( about Rs 500 crore) on promoting the event.

It had simultaneously signed a back-to-back deal with MSM that Sony Set Max would be the official broadcaster.

However, the deal was scrapped a few months before IPL 2009 was to begin.

MSM finally retained the rights for the remainder of the nine years that the deal had to run after a legal battle, but not before committing to dish out $ 1.63 billion ( Rs 7500 crore).

Studying science

An opinion piece in Nature makes interesting reading:

As well as building an open and consistent data infrastructure, there is the added challenge of deciding what data to collect and how to use them. This is not trivial. Knowledge creation is a complex process, so perhaps alternative measures of creativity and productivity should be included in scientific metrics, such as the filing of patents, the creation of prototypes4 and even the production of YouTube videos. Many of these are more up-to-date measures of activity than citations. Knowledge transmission differs from field to field: physicists more commonly use preprint servers; computer scientists rely on working papers; others favour conference talks or books. Perhaps publications in these different media should be weighted differently in different fields.

People are starting to think about collecting alternative kinds of data. Systems such as MESUR (Metrics from Scholarly Usage of Resources, http://www.mesur.org), a project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Science Foundation, record details such as how often articles are being searched and queried, and how long readers spend on them. New tools are available to capture and analyse ‘messy’ data on human interactions — for example, visual analytics intended to discover patterns, trends, and relationships between terrorist groups are now being applied to scientific groups (http://nvac.pnl.gov/agenda.stm).

There needs to be a greater focus on what these data mean, and how they can be best interpreted. This requires the input of social scientists, rather than just those more traditionally involved in data capture, such as computer scientists. Basic research is also needed into how measurement can change behaviour, to avoid the problems that Heinz and others have experienced with well-intended metrics that lead to undesirable outcomes. If metrics are to be used to best effect in funding and promotion decisions, economic theory is needed to examine how changes to incentives alter the way research is performed.

D Day is announced

Hindu reports:

Shashank Manohar, President of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), has asked Modi to convene the Governing Council meeting at the Cricket Centre within 24 hours of the IPL III final to be played at the D.Y. Patil Stadium on Sunday.

Reliable sources said Manohar may have taken the consent of all the members of the GC before asking Modi to convene the meeting. According to the IPL rule, only the chairman has the right to convene a meeting. Clearly, the Kochi franchisee issue will dominate the proceedings and the senior GC members expect a hard time for the IPL chairman.

The members of the GC are: Lalit Modi (chairman), Niranjan Shah (vice-chairman), Shashank Manohar, N. Srinivasan, Sanjay Jagdale, Mohinder Pandove, Inderjit Bindra, Farokh Abdulla, Arun Jaitley, Rajiv Shukla, Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi, Sunil Gavaskar, Ravi Shastri and Chirayu Amin.

The ugliest statues in the world

India's Supreme Court rebuked her for spending $425 million in public funds to build statues of herself

Foreign Policy magazine rates Mayawati’s statues as number 6 among the world’s ugliest statues.

Passenger rights first!

Reuters brings us incredible news:

Some airlines in Europe are not going to be in business in the next week or two due to the volcanic ash cloud that has affected European air travel, the Association of European Airlines said on Monday.
…
Henderson said he was not talking at this stage about the AEA’s members — which include British Airways, Air France and KLM — but added of his group: “There are bound to be some which are getting pretty concerned, that’s for sure. There are bound to be some which are staring down the barrel of a gun.”

The AEA said its carriers had sustained cumulative losses of 625 million euros ($874 million) in the past five days, including compensation for stranded travellers. The group expressed its disappointment at the European Commission’s decision to focus on passenger rights first.

Now that must really hurt!

Lava River – Eyjafjallajokull Eruption

Manu Sharma deemed Jessica Lal’s murderer

11 years on this case has probably ended its term in court, reports BBC:

The Indian Supreme Court has upheld the life sentence of the son of an Indian politician who was convicted for killing the model Jessica Lal in 1999.

Manu Sharma’s guilt has been “proven beyond doubt”, the court ruled.

Sharma, son of former Congress party minister Venod Sharma, shot Miss Lal after she refused to serve him a drink at the Delhi restaurant she worked at.

The Delhi high court found him guilty in 2007 but Sharma appealed against the decision in the Supreme Court.

Legal experts say that Sharma has exhausted all his options for appeal.

The court also upheld the convictions and four-year sentences of two other people accused in connection with the killing, Amardeep Singh Gill and Vikas Yadav.

“The prosecution has proved beyond reasonable doubt the presence of Manu Sharma at the site of the offence,” news agency Press Trust of India quoted Supreme Court Justices P Sathasivam and Swatanter Kumar as saying.

“The Delhi high court has given cogent and adequate reasons for reversal of acquittal given by the trial court,” the judges said.

IPL may be the loser

OneIndia reports:

Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Monday assured Parliament that all financial aspects of the Indian Premier League (IPL) will be probed, and none who are found guilty, will be spared by the law.

“Some honourable members in the morning raised issues of the IPL and wanted to have a thorough probe in all its aspects. In fact, the concerned the department has already started the investigation process,” Mukherjee informed.

“I can assure the honourable members that all aspects of IPL – including its source of funding, from where the funds were routed how it has been invested-all these aspects are being looked into and the appropriate action as per law will be taken,” he added.
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Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad and Janata Dal (United) (JD-U) chief Sharad Yadav and Communist Party of India (CPI) leader Gurudas Dasgupta demanded a probe into the IPL.

This follows the first definite news of financial irregularities in the IPL, as reported by TOI:

After facing an unceremonious ouster following the performance debacle during IPL-3, the owners of Kings XI are now facing a bouncer from the Central Excise and Service Tax Commissioner, who has slapped a notice of Rs 5 crore for the service tax for the year 2008-09.

The authorities in the service tax commissionerate are computing the tax liabilities of KPH Dream Cricket Pvt Ltd, the company owning Kings XI, for the current season, sources said. Besides sending the notices, the commissionorate is learnt to have communicated with Ness Wadia, Priety Zinta, Mohit Vivek Burman, the co- partners of the company, to clear the tax liabilities of the company.

Meanwhile, PTI tells us that other allegations are being made and denied:

Embattled IPL Commissioner Lalit Modi today rubbished allegations of betting and money laundering in the event and threatened to take legal action against the newspaper which has made the accusations.

Modi, who is in Dubai to attend the ICC’s Executive Board meeting on behalf of BCCI President Shashank Manohar, said the charges were “nonsense” and aimed at discrediting the Twenty20 tournament.

If IPL is much reduced in exposure would it be badly missed? Is 20-20 really cricket?

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.

Fear of flying

Water control

View of the Baglihar Dam in Doda district of J&K

The SoutheastAsianIdea presents a very informative piece on Indus water sharing which is worth reading in full. A part of the introduction reads:

If Pakistan and India had normal, trustful relations, there would be a mutually-verified monitoring process which would assure that there is no change in the flows going into Pakistan. (In an even more ideal world, India could increase low-flows during the critical planting season, with significant benefit to Pakistani farmers and with very small impacts on power generation in India.) Because the relationship was not normal when the treaty was negotiated, Pakistan would agree only if limitations on India’s capacity to manipulate the timing of flows was hardwired into the treaty. This was done by limiting the amount of “live storage” (the storage that matters for changing the timing of flows) in each and every hydropower dam that India would construct on the two rivers.

While this made sense given knowledge in 1960, over time it became clear that this restriction gave rise to a major problem. The physical restrictions meant that gates for flushing silt out of the dams could not be built, thus ensuring that any dam in India would rapidly fill with the silt pouring off the young Himalayas.

This was a critical issue at stake in the Baglihar case. Pakistan (reasonably) said that the gates being installed were in violation of the specifications of the treaty. India (equally reasonably) argued that it would be wrong to build a dam knowing it would soon fill with silt. The finding of the Neutral Expert was essentially a reinterpretation of the Treaty, saying that the physical limitations no longer made sense. While the finding was reasonable in the case of Baglihar, it left Pakistan without the mechanism – limited live storage – which was its only (albeit weak) protection against upstream manipulation of flows in India. This vulnerability was driven home when India chose to fill Baglihar exactly at the time when it would impose maximum harm on farmers in downstream Pakistan.

We may be upstream of Pakistan, but China is upstream of us.