The first round matches of the ICC World Twenty20 began today, with Delhi as one of the venues of the main round. However, given the problems plaguing the Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA), the governing body for cricket in the city, this could not have come at a more unfortunate time. Amidst growing accusations of corruption, over 100-odd employees of the organisation have gone on indefinite strike, and a Delhi High Court has vacated a stay order, calling for the demolition of a structure at the Ferozeshah Kotla stadium in Delhi.
In May 2012, former cricketer and Member of Parliament Kirti Azad wrote to the then-minister of state for corporate affairs, RPN Singh, complaining of the “accounting mess” within the DDCA. In December last year, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) issued a one-line statement stating that Azad had been suspended for “anti-party activities.” The cricket association, led by current Finance Minister Arun Jaitley for 14 years (1999-2013), had “suffered from scores of infraction of rules, procedure, fiscal indiscipline, misgovernance, maladministration, and siphoning away of funds from the coffers of DDCA,” claimed Azad.
Part of this can be attributed to the lack of transparency with which the organisation has been managed. Those unfamiliar with the opacity behind which the DDCA operates do not realise the huge benefits they enjoy by gifting free match tickets, said Pramod Jain, a DDCA member for over 30 years. “They give them to a variety of people—politicians, ministers, lawyers, judges, the police, municipal corporation, and MTNL, etc—to either build or consolidate their personal relations that come in handy when they need these people for their personal work.” Jain then told me of a DDCA functionary who had gotten the building of a middle school run by him extended without the mandatory approvals from the municipal and fire departments.
Take, for instance, the allegations made in the Jai Karan Singh vs DDCA case of 2010 where Jai Karan Singh, one of DDCA's oldest members, had challenged the "arbitrary ways" the association's executive committee issued complimentary tickets and sought a ceiling on it. The sixth page of the 12-page Delhi High Court order, dated 13 January 2010, reads: “…the defendant”—DDCA—“had issued 25,288 complimentary passes as against 14,997 tickets sold and the value of the passes was not less than Rs 20 crores whereas sale proceeds which they are showing to have been received by sale of tickets is only Rs 3.25 crores.” This was in reference to the India versus England One-Day International game played at the 42,000-capacity Ferozeshah Kotla stadium on 28 March 2006.
If these figures are correct, then a simple calculation tells us that the DDCA possibly “lost” at least Rs 16.75 crore, assuming the free passes distributed were worth no more than Rs 20 crore. The second page of the same order, written by Justice Manmohan, mentions a prediction made by Jaitley, 12 days before that match, that “the number of seats that would be put to public sale in the forthcoming one-day match between India and England on 28.03.2006 would be the highest that has ever been subjected to sale in the history of this stadium.” The case dragged on till January 2010 when, not surprisingly, the court rejected the DDCA plea to dismiss Singh’s application while giving the association further directions.
The India-England match is a perfect example of the type of financial irregularity that took place within the DDCA, and is just one of the many indicators of the corruption that has seeped deep into the foundation of Ferozeshah Kotla.
However, the practices are now gradually being exposed through a sustained and determined crusade led by Azad. “I love challenges,” he said, referring to his nine-year-long battle against the DDCA. “It is a very good challenge for me because I am fighting against all odds,” he told me when I met him in February.
Azad is currently amidst a Rs 2.5 crore defamation suit that the DDCA recently filed against him in the Delhi High Court alleging that he had made defamatory comments against the association. Azad’s disagreements with Jaitley have widely been reported in the media despite their belonging to the same political party, the BJP. “They [the present DDCA dispensation] have started it,” Azad said, “and I will finish it.” Azad’s crusade against the DDCA has only been partially successful in the face of the staunch opposition, in that it was his efforts and those of other former cricketers like Bishan Singh Bedi, Maninder Singh and Surinder Khanna that the CBI is currently conducting an inquiry into these allegations. The Serious Fraud Investigation Office has also probed the matter and submitted a report indicting the DDCA on 60 counts.
Even as Azad fights the battle in the court, the DDCA faced another telling blow when the BCCI shifted an India versus Sri Lanka T20 International match from Delhi to Ranchi on 12 February 2016, after the association failed to qualify Ferozesha Kotla for the mandatory fitness certificates from government agencies, which would have allowed them to clear the stadium for staging the match.
Despite much struggle and many red faces at the Kotla, the DDCA has yet to receive approval from the Delhi High Court for hosting the upcoming ICCWorldTwenty20 matches. Delhi was slated to host 10 matches this month. The Delhi High Court again appointed retired Justice Mukul Mudgal as the overseer of these World Cup matches. Mudgal had been appointed to the same position last year for the India-South Africa Test match held at Kotla in December 2015. Under him, financial irregularities had decreased, and the DDCA even showed a profit from the match.
“Certain influential persons in the DDCA could not make money through illegal means during the India-South Africa test match, held in Delhi in December, after Mudgal, appointed by the court, plugged all holes for underhand dealings,” a DDCA official who asked to remain anonymous, told me. “Now, the same people are annoyed and fear that Mudgal would again put them in their place.”
While the ICCT20 matches at the Kotla will be over by the end of March, Azad is set to carry on, despite the Delhi High Court recently dismissing his plea to appoint a Special Investigative Team-led independent administrator for the DDCA and order a CBI inquiry into the malpractices in the association.
“Our petition was dismissed for being ‘premature,’ but what we actually wanted we got: it has come in the [court] proceedings,” Azad told me. “Secondly, the CBI knows that if it’s not going to do it”—investigate the DDCA—“efficiently we’ve the option to go back to the court, and this time we would go to a division bench.” He told me he was hopeful of the corrupt being nailed one day. “Their ‘boss’ and everyone will have to go to jail,” he said confidently.
I asked Azad whom he meant by “boss.”
“People who know the DDCA issue will understand who the ‘boss’ is,” he answered. “This is an open and shut case. It is getting delayed, but in this case I don’t believe in the saying ‘justice delayed is justice denied.’ It will see the light of the day, whether today, tomorrow or next year. The screw is tightening.”
Azad hasn’t been the only one who has raised several issues with Jaitley and former DDCA treasurer Narinder Batra, currently president of Hockey India and widely considered to be close to Jaitley. Over the years, the former DDCA joint secretary Sunil Mittal, the late DDCA director Rakesh Mathur, Aam Aadmi Party leader Sanjay Singh, and DDCA member Dinesh Kumar Sharma have all written many detailed letters to Jaitley—copies of which I have—pointing out the “serious lapses and irregularities in financial matters,” besides objecting to meetings allegedly being held at Jaitley’s residence during his tenure.
In a letter written in 2011, Mittal, an advocate, wrote to Jaitley: “I know that some other members of the DDCA have also written similar letters to you in the recent past. However, the decision on those letters, if at all, was taken in some closed-door meetings held at your residence which was attended by only 5-6 most important office-bearers of DDCA.”
Azad concurred with Mittal. He claimed that Chetan Chauhan, the current DDCA 'working' president, and the vice-president CK Khanna “sit in a hotel and decide things.” Then, he added, “Maybe, meetings also take place at some important persons’ houses.”