After a rather bitter discussion and exchange of emails, the committee postponed its hearing to Wednesday (2 pm) after initially slotting it for Tuesday evening and then Wednesday morning.
It was a day full of debates — within and outside the courtroom — in the Lalit Modi case. Even as the Bombay high court (HC) heard his petition, demanding the recusal of Chirayu Amin and Arun Jaitley from the disciplinary committee, the suspended IPL chairman’s lawyers and members of the DC were involved in an argument over the time and date of the committee’s next hearing.
After a rather bitter discussion and exchange of emails, the committee postponed its hearing to Wednesday (2 pm) after initially slotting it for Tuesday evening and then Wednesday morning.
The Modi camp has been clearly told this is their last opportunity to cross-examine the BCCI’s witnesses, among who is Indian Premier League chief operating officer Sundar Raman, who has flown down from South Africa for the hearing. Others are IMG officials Paul Manning, John Loffhagen and Peter Griffiths, who have arrived from London. The hearing will take place at Hotel Taj Palace in New Delhi.
Meanwhile in Mumbai, the BCCI’s counsel told the HC that Modi had not brought forth any evidence suggesting that the members of the disciplinary had any pecuniary or personal gains from being on the committee. One of the allegations against Modi is that he kept BCCI in the dark about the MSM (Sony) agreement to pay $80 million as facilitation fee to World Sports Group for IPL media rights.
Senior counsel Ram Jethmalani, who celebrated his 87th birthday on Tuesday, arguing on behalf of Modi, said Jaitley and Amin were part of general body of the BCCI which decided to terminate the agreement with Sony in June when it came to know about the facilitation fee deal. Later, the BCCI had entered into a fresh agreement with Sony.
Aspi Chinoy, also representing Modi, said Amin had suppressed a fact which Modi had exposed and it would be “astonishing naivete” to believe that the interim IPL chairman would have no bias or animus against Modi.
Modi’s counsel Mehmood Abdi said, “The arguments concluded today. Keeping in view the urgency of the matter the court has reserved the judgment to be pronounced tomorrow at 11 am. In view of this development, we are requesting the BCCI to defer the disciplinary committee proceedings at least till the judgment is pronounced tomorrow because if we succeed, the entire proceedings of the disciplinary committee shall be stayed,” Abdi said.
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