Board of Control for Cricket India president Shashank Manohar's statement after the IPL Governing Council meeting in Mumbai on Monday.
'IPL is a great property and is loved by all across the globe. The commercial aspect of such an event is an important thing. However, ethics and transparency are more important. But since the last 15 days there were lot of allegations and counter allegations made thru media as a result of which the board looked into the allegations leveled and took a decision to issue a show cause notice to Lalit Modi, pending an enquiry, decided to suspend him.
'But as the tournament was on we never wanted the tournament to be disrupted or any problems created in the tournament. The show cause notice was sent only after the presentation ceremony was over. And thereafter Mr Modi was suspended. After receiving a reply from Mr Modi, the board will hold an enquiry into the matter if necessary. Or if the reply of Mr Modi convinces the members, the proceedings will be dropped.
'Today an emergency governing council meeting was called and this meeting was scheduled for today because we didn't want the tournament to be disrupted or disturbed by any of the actions of the board because the IPL is a valuable property of the board. In today's meeting, the chargesheet was discussed as also the committee unanimously appointed Chirayu Amin as the interim chairman of the committee.
'We've also asked Prof Ratnakar Shetty to look into all the records because many of the documents are missing from the office of the IPL and the board. Everyday the income tax department is asking for the documents but we don't have them in our custody. Therefore, we have asked Prof Shetty to look into all these aspects of documents and we've taken a further decision to go further ahead with regards to the tournament for the year 2011.
'The committee appointed Ravi Shastri, Sunil Gavaskar and MAK Pataudi to discuss and decide with regards to the modalities of withholding three foreign cricketers and four Indian cricketers. After discussing the issue with the franchisees, they've been asked to come back to the board so that a final decision in this regard can be taken.
'The governing council will meet after a month, sometime in June after all the preliminary things are done because most of the members of the governing council were unaware of the things happening. This is all I have to tell you today.'
