Kochi IPL Team – An IPLish Start!

Boy! They don’t even have a team or name yet, but the Kochi IPL franchisee is definitely at the top spot right now. They are in the same position as KKR was in last year. Sunanda Pushkar seems to be this years Fake IPL Player.

Since his controversial visit to Saudi in Feb, Shashi Tharoor was so out of news in last 3 months. He’s back to what he does the best, but this time someone else did the job for him. Excerpts from Modi’s tweets.

“I was told by him not to get into who owns rendezvous.Specially Sunanda Pushkar.Why?The same has been minuted in my records”

“25% of kochi team is given free to Rendezvous sports for life.The same equity is non dilutable in prepetuity.What does that mean? Why ?”

“Who are the shareholders of rendezvous. And why have they been given this 100’s of million dollar bonanza ?”

“Kochi shareholders are: Rendezvous 25% free, Rendezvous 1%,Anchor 27%, Parinee 26%, Film waves combine 12%,Anand Shyam 8%,Vivek venugopal 1%”

“Rendezvous free equity – held by kisan,shailender & pushpa gaikwad,Sunanda pushkar,Puja gulathi,jayant kotalwar,vishnu prasad,sundip agarwal”

Sunanda Pushkar

This Sunanda, a Kashmiri beautician, who owns a spa in Dubai, supposedly have 18% of the Rendezvous’ 25% stake. She is believed to be Tharoor’s fiancée, even though his office denied this. If this is true, who’s the real owner of Kochi IPL team? As per her Linkedin profile, she is also the Sales Manger of TECOM Dubai, who’s involved in another controversy with Govt. of Kerala over the investment on the Smart City project in Kochi. This gives a new political dimension to the issue too.

So within weeks, they have managed to have a multi-crore deal, a controversy including a Cabinet Minister, an allegation against Gujarat Chief Minsiter, a new celebrity out in the block, a compliant to BCCI, a possible lawsuit against IPL/Lalit Modi. WOW! What more do you need?

Surprisingly, Tharoor is silent about all this, even on twitter, which is so unlike him. Or is he enjoying the game?

[Update] Tharoor did responded to the allegations, through an official statement at his blog early today, which I missed. I don’t think I have any reason not to believe him. He is so far the most transparent politician I’ve seen.

I’ve had enough. http://tharoor.in/press/official-statement-on-the-ipl-allegation/