Goenka denies Sourav Ganguly's involvement in Pune franchise amid questions of conflict of interest
The owner of the newly claimed Pune franchise of the Indian Premier League, Sanjiv Goenka, denied all allegations related to the involvement of the former India captain Sourav Ganguly, in the franchise.
“Sourav is not been involved, that’s for sure. This is entirely mine. It’s 100 percent owned by me. It’s me and my group of companies,” Goenka cleared the air.
It is to be noted that Goenka and Ganguly co-own the Indian Super League (ISL) football team Atletico de Kolkata (ATK), due to which speculations of Ganguly’s involvement in the IPL bid were also doing rounds.
Ganguly is a part of the IPL Governing Council (GC), and his involvement in a participating team would raise the contentious clause of conflict of interest, wherein a GC member having stakes in one of the teams might influence the decision making process.
No dialogue or discussion with Sourav whatsoever: Goenka
The ATK co-owner however dismissed all the charges as he said, “You all are being hypothetical that I’m going to rope in Sourav. We have not even thought about it. There has been no dialogue or discussion with Sourav whatsoever. I was generally speaking to him about cricket and he looked away.”
“That was in the last football match. I was generally asking him, what do you think,”
Earlier during the press conference immediately after the bidding where this question was raised, the BCCI President Shashank Manohar answered in the negative as well. "According to me there is not [a conflict of interest] because this is a transparent bidding concept," Manohar said.
Manohar further substantiated his defence by saying that the bid amounts were not known to anybody walking into the meeting. It was a walk-in bid, and hence nobody knew as to who was going to bid, and how much.
He pointed towards the newly appointed ombudsman by the BCCI and said that while he doesn’t believe that Ganguly was involved, if anyone has further doubts, there is the independent committee to decide on it.
Questions were, however, unanswered on the probability of the involvement of Ganguly, who is a part of the IPL GC as a cricketer, over the decision making process of the IPL relating to the Pune franchise, given that its owner is the business partner of Ganguly in an entirely different affair.
Had originally bid for KKR: Goenka
While it can be argued that the very aspect of ATK being a separate entity doesn’t entitle Ganguly for any financial gains from the Pune franchise, and hence there has to be no conflict, such defence has not been offered by any of the defending parties.
Further clearing the air, Goenka reminded everyone of his interest in the Kolkata franchise as well where he was out-bidden by the incumbent owner Shah Rukh Khan. He mentioned that buying an IPL franchise had always been in his plans, and he had finally succeeded in that this year.
“You may recall that we’ve originally bid for the Kolkata team but Shah Rukh’s bid was marginally higher than ours. We’ve been wanting to get into IPL for a long time. It looks like a good opportunity.”
The two new franchises were decided through a reverse bidding process on November 8, where Goenka's New Rising consortium won the Pune IPL franchise, while phone manufacturer Intex won the Rajkot franchise, for the next two seasons.
The two spots were vacated, after the Lodha Committee constituted to investigate the IPL Corruption Scandal of 2013, suspended the Chennai Super Kings and the Rajasthan Royals for two years.