New Delhi, June 6 (IANS) City Corporation’s managing director Anirudh Deshpande Sunday said he would have formed a new company had his bid for the Pune franchise been successful and he had told this to the Indian Premier League (IPL).
The City Corporation, a Pune-based construction company, in which Sharad Pawar and his family have 16 percent stakeholding, denied the Maharashtra strongman had any role in the failed IPL bid, and maintained that Deshpande made the bid in his ‘individual capacity.’
But Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) president Shashank Manohar Saturday refuted this claim, saying the failed bid came in the company’s name.
Fresh media reports also claimed that Deshpande was directed Jan 31 to bid for Pune IPL franchise on behalf of the company. But Deshpande says the January decision was cancelled and a new resolution was passed by the company in March to allow him to bid on his own.
‘The bid was purchased in the name of the company but I had told the IPL that I will float a separate firm if I win the bid. The January letter was always disclosed, it was in the bid document itself, it is not fabricated. City Corp decided later they will not bid,’ Deshpande told NDTV.
‘How can I fabricate a March 17 letter which I submitted to the IPL Governing Council March 21 in the presence of other bidders?’ he asked.
Pawar and his daughter Supriya Sule, too, have been denying their involvement in the Pune bid ever since the media reports broke Friday making claims to the contrary.
