Former cricketer accuses DDCA of giving contracts to fake companies, paying them crores
Former cricketer accuses DDCA of giving contracts to fake companies, paying them crores
Amid a bitter face-off with the Centre on the DDCA row, the Aam Aadmi Party government in Delhi on Sunday decided to form a commission of inquiry to probe the affairs of the Delhi cricket association.
Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal tweeted that the government had written to former solicitor-general Gopal Subramanium to head the commission into the working of the Delhi and District Cricket Association and that he had agreed to chair the probe panel.
“Sh Gopal Subra-maniam agrees to chair Commission of Enquiry on DDCA scam,” Kejriwal tweeted. A Delhi government spokesperson said the inquiry would begin very soon.
The development came on the day former India cricketer and Bhartiya Janta Party MP Kirti Azad accused the DDCA of “massive financial irregularities” and urged the “Enforcement Directorate to probe the issue”. The former cricketer alleged that the DDCA had given contracts to fake companies, paying them crores of rupees in cash and fudging the auditing of accounts.
Reacting to Azad’s claim of financial bungling in the DDCA, board vice-president Chetan Chauhan said all the material the BJP MP relied upon for his allegations were taken from earlier findings on the basis of which S.P. Bansal was removed as president.
“This so-called expose is on the basis of our findings, which were done by the three-member committee. It was due to those findings that S.P. Bansal was removed,” Chauhan said.
Addressing the media, Azad displayed a video produced by WikiLeaks4India which claimed that the DDCA had given out contracts to various companies but the addresses given for these were found to be false.
It also alleged that the DDCA hired office and other equipment at vastly inflated prices, including hiring of laptops at '16,000 per day and printers at '3,000 per day.
“I just want to expose corruption, the accounts of it will be explained later. I repeat, this is not personal or against one person. It is against corruption,” he said.
Azad, a member of the Indian team that won the 1983 World Cup, also refuted former DDCA president Arun Jaitley’s allegation that he had met Congress chief Sonia Gandhi in order to sketch out a plan to target him.
“If someone is raising these allegations, he must know that three fingers will point back at him,” he said.
Jaitley, who headed the DDCA for 13 years till 2013, has been accused of corruption by the AAP. Kejriwal has demanded that Jaitley resign or be removed as Union finance minister to enable an independent probe into DDCA matters.
The Delhi government’s decision to appoint the committee came a month after an AAP government-appointed probe committee recommended immediate suspension of the DDCA by the BCCI for alleged irregularities, including financial bungling.
The Delhi government panel had suggested that an interim committee of professional cricketers manage affairs of the game in the capital. The committee had also recommended to the government to appoint a commission of inquiry under the Commission of Enquiries Act while mentioning findings on DDCA’s alleged wrongdoings by various probe panels in the recent past, including the Serious Fraud Investigation Office.
