Qaiser Mohammad Ali
Suspended BJP MP Kirti Azad on Thursday announced that he had decided to move the Delhi High Court to seek a court-monitored CBI inquiry into DDCA’s affairs besides requesting appointment of an administrator to run the association.
Kirti Azad’s announcement at a press conference in New Delhi comes 19 days after the DDCA sued Kirti Azad and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal for making “defamatory statements” against the association in public, and sought Rs 2.5 crore each from both politicians, besides a “public apology”.
TUSSLE WITHIN BJP: Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitey (left) and suspended BJP MP Kirti Azad.Azad, who captained Delhi to Ranji Trophy triumph in 1991-92, also released a five-page letter he had written to former DDCA president Arun Jaitley (1999-2013), currently Union Finance Minister, in which he had brought to his “notice further proof of the complicity of his ex-colleagues”.
“But, it seems that I failed to move him, yet again. Be as it may, I have decided to move the Hon’ble High Court to seek a court-monitored CBI inquiry and shall be also seeking appointment of an administrator in DDCA,” Azad told reporters at his residence.
“I am waiting for Justice Mukul Mudgal to submit his second report [with the Delhi High Court]. The moment he does that, we will push the writ by clubbing his findings too,” he said.
Mudgal has devoted over 61 per cent of his first report on the shortcomings he observed during the India-South Africa Test in Delhi last month, in a chapter titled ‘Deficiencies found in the preparations of the 4th Test match and functioning of DDCA’. The report is expected to be the financial aspect of the match.
Azad once again reminded he had loads of proof of the mismanagement against DDCA administrators.
“With loads of proof of wrongdoing, mismanagement and irregularities against DDCA office-bearers who have perpetuated themselves for decades by manipulating the proxy system, I am confident that the Hon’ble High Court will be pleased to accede to my request,” he said. “I stand by my demand to hold all these office-bearers accountable for ruining cricket in Delhi and for all the embezzlement that they have done over the years. The process of cleansing DDCA has begun.”
Azad is also hopeful of gains from a hard-hitting report that former Chief Justice of India RM Lodha has submitted with the Supreme Court. His hopes also emanates from a hearing on Justice Mukul Mudgal’s “damning indictment” of DDCA coming up in the Delhi High Court on 2 February.
Azad charged that certain people sitting outside the DDCA are dictating terms to current DDCA office-bearers and cited a recent resolution by circulation that emanated from someone who is not an office-bearer on 31 December.
“A mysterious mail sent from one Paresh Rout to all office bearers ‘instructing’ them to sign a resolution has shown how DDCA is being run,” he said referring to the story that www.JantaKaReporter.com broke on 6 January (EXCLUSIVE: DDCA moves resolution for filing Rs 2.5 crore seperate defamation cases against Kejriwal, Kirti Azad).
“Like always there are outsiders, in ‘non-executive roles’ without any accountability, who keep advising DDCA office bearers how to run DDCA. The mail instructed the DDCA office-bearers to approve two resolutions: one, to file a civil defamation case against the CM of Delhi and me; second, to appoint the same auditors, Sanjay Bhardwaj & Co as auditors for 2014-15 [well after the financial year had ended],” .
“Hectic lobbying by an outsider (who has ruined DDCA) ensured that 15 out of 24 [DDCA] Directors signed on the resolution whereas nine Directors have somehow gathered courage to resist the pressures and have refused to sign on the dotted line,” Azad claimed.
On the basis of this resolution, DDCA treasurer Ravinder Manchanda sued both Azad and Kejriwal in the Delhi High Court.
Azad also trained his guns at the seemingly well-entrenched ‘nexus’ with the auditors that the DDCA has been appointing over the years.
“Sanjay Bhardwaj & Co. has been the favourite audit firm for donkey’s years. Sanjay Bhardwaj is the common element in various audit firms which have been getting the DDCA audit over the last 10 years — Ashish Makhija & Co., RMSB, MSA, M. Sharma & Associates, Sanjay Bhardwaj & Co. etc. Only the names have changed, yet all of them have had this common auditor in DDCA all these years,” claimed Azad.
(Read: EXCLUSIVE: DDCA top official admits body has hired ‘two’ internal auditors)
“It matters little that at least 16 executive committee members’ terms have already expired and they are illegal squatters in DDCA,” Azad said.
Azad charged that the mismanagement in the DDCA received a ‘fillip’ during Jaitley’s 14-year tenure.
“All this loot and mismanagement has been going on for ages, and got a fillip when Sh Arun Jaitley was president. He simply did not make an attempt to clamp down on all these nefarious activities when we repeatedly brought them to his notice,” Azad said, renewing his battle against his senior party colleague.
“Rather, he termed me as ‘Complaint Filing Authority’ who was only playing spoilsport in the ‘lilywhite’ sports body. DDCA doled out freebies to all the near and dear ones of these proxy holders,” he said.
About last month’s India-South Africa Test match in Delhi, held under the supervision of retired Judge Mukul Mudgal on instructions from the Delhi High Court, Azad said: “Despite the short time to conduct the Test, Justice Mudgal-led team managed to make a profit of approx. Rs 2 crore from the game. With a little more time next time, we are sure that Rs 5 crore can be earned by conducting a single match, provided this current management is kept away from managing the affairs of the matches. Not surprisingly, DDCA has always shown losses in the last one decade during matches that were hosted here [at the Kotla].”
Azad said that even after Jaitley became Finance Minister, Minister of Corporate Affairs and I&B Minister, “I wrote to him three letters along with bagful of proof and requested him to set up an inquiry to fix accountability and to recover the lost money”.
“Contrary to that, we have seen that an ex-counsel of DDCA, Sh UK Chaudhary was made a member of CLB’s Lok Adalat which in turn, compounded several compounding applications of DDCA office bearers on one Sunday. It is heartening that this miscarriage of justice was averted in the nick of time, when on a petition by one Gurpreet Singh (CO.A (SB)-53 of 2015) the Hon High Court has [has forced to] stay all such compounding judgements made by the Committee in which the said UK Chaudhary was a member,” he alleged.
