Irked by the reluctance of Karnataka State Cricket Association (KSCA) in providing free passes for IPL matches to corporators, the BBMP council has made up its mind to “teach a lesson” to the sports body.
Irked by the reluctance of Karnataka State Cricket Association (KSCA) in providing free passes for IPL matches to corporators, the BBMP council has made up its mind to “teach a lesson” to the sports body.
This year, the BBMP had asked KSCA to give 450 free passes—two each for 198 corporators and the rest for the officials—for IPL matches to be held at M Chinnaswamy stadium. Initially, the KSCA rejected the demand. After much protest from the elected representatives, the KSCA decided to give them 250 free passes, 200 less than what they had asked for.
This has irked the corporators. Deputy mayor S Harish instructed them to return the passes to the KSCA. “If they do not give 450 passes to the BBMP, it’s fine and we will not go and beg for that. We will take proper resolution in the coming council meeting and teach KSCA a lesson,” he said.
The deputy mayor recalled that last year too, the KSCA had provided only 100 free passes along with 400 tickets, for which the corporators had to shell out `1,000.
He said that last year itself he had told the corporators not to accept the tickets, but they did not listen to him.
He said the stadium belonged to the BBMP and it was given to the KSCA to promote cricket. He pointed out that by organising IPL, the association was not doing any charity but doing business. He said the KSCA was making `360 crore from TV rights and `150 crore from advertisement rights, but paying only Rs15,000 to the BBMP.
Further, Harish expressed dissent on the comment of TV Mohandas Pai—former HR head of Infosys—who had chided the corporators for insisting that they be given free passes to watch the cricket extravaganza live. Harish said Infosys itself had taken land on subsidised rate and got tax rebate too. In this light, he asked what moral right Pai had to disapprove of the corporators’ demand.
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