Former cricketer Kirti Azad calls for ED probe in DDCA's 'massive financial irregularities'
New Delhi: Amid the bitter face-off with the Centre on the Delhi & Districts Cricket Association row, the Aam Aadmi Party on Sunday decided to order an inquiry into the alleged financial irregularities of the state cricket body.
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 DDCA, and the latter has agreed to chair the probe panel.
The development came on the day former India cricketer and Bhartiya Janta Party MP Kirti Azad “shied” from pinpointing finance minister and former DDCA president Arun Jaitley directly. He, however, accused the cricket body 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 had fudged auditing. Reacting to Azad’s claims, DDCA vice-president Chetan Chauhan said that all the material the former relied upon was 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 Bansal was removed,” Chauhan said. Earlier in a press conference, Azad displayed a video produced by WikiLeaks4India which claimed that the Delhi association had given out contracts to various companies but the addresses given were found to be false.
He also alleged that the DDCA hired office and other equipment at vastly inflated prices, including hiring of laptops at Rs 16,000 per day and printers at Rs 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.
Later, Bansal strongly refuted the charges saying that no company bill mentioned in the sting operation exists in the cricket body’s transaction records.
“I as DDCA president rebut the charges. They have misrepresented the whole story. The facts and bills that Wikileaks4India was showing were totally false. No bill shown in the sting was accounted for from the DDCA. Our balance sheet is ready till 2013. We did not expect a company to do such a thing (sting operation) and some former, respected cricketers to back their bogus claims,” Bansal said.
Azad, a member of the Indian team who won the 1983 World Cup, also refuted 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 Delhi’s ruling Aam Aadmi Party. Kejriwal has demanded that Jaitley must resign or be removed from his post as union finance minister in order 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 government panel had suggested that an interim committee of professional cricketers should 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 about findings on DDCA’s alleged wrongdoings by various probe panels in the recent past including the Serious Fraud Investigation Office.
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