Praful Patel daughter's name dragged into IPL row

New Delhi, Apr 22: After Shashi Tharoor, looks like the Indian Premier League (IPL) controversy is set to claim more casualties as several other leaders' and thier family members' names have emerged in connection with the raging cricket row.

Most of the latest entrants into the dirty world of IPL are Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leaders namely Sharad Pawar's daughter, Supriya Sule; Aviation Minister, Praful Patel; along with his daughter Poorna Patel.

While Supriya Sule has been repeatedly dismissing the allegations against her family, the Patels are now feeling the heat of questions raised against them and their involvement in IPL.

Poorna Patel takes care of marketing and hospitality of the IPL. She has been working for IPL since its launch in 2008.

Poorna Patel's alleged involvement takes significance from the reports that two days before the the bidding for the new IPL teams began, Patel"s personal secretary sent an email to Shashi Tharoor which contained details of the franchisee valuations of the IPL teams. It has been reported that Poorna Patel received these documents first from IPL CEO Sundar Raman.

Besides Poorna, another daughter's name has also been dragged into the controversy.

The name of Laila Mahmood, the step-daughter of Vijay Mallya, who owns the Bangalore team, has also emerged in the row. Laila is also the 'mystery woman' who sprinted away with the documents and laptop from Lalit Modi's office just minutes before probing officers reached the spot.

It has been alleged that Laila and Poorna were closely involved in the bidding process for the two new IPL teams.

As expected both the fathers have come out in the defence of their daughters rubbishing reports on their involvement in the IPL row.

While Mallya said that his daughter works for Lalit Modi but he has no connection with her, Patel urged the media to not drag the young girl's name into the controversy as she has just been working for IPL as a junior employee.

NCP too quickly jumped to save its image by denying all the allegations slapped against it. The party spokesperson D P Tripati on Thursday, Apr 22 held a press conference just to deny the 'NCP link' to IPL. On Poorna, he said that no one has denied that she is working with IPL but stressed she has nothing to do with the controversy.

He also ruled out that there was any rift between the NCP and Congress over the issue.

OneIndia News