prasad1
Active member
The Delhi & District Cricket Association, like many small associations across India, was a run-down affair occupying some concrete building near the crumbling ruins of the ancient 'Kotla' in Delhi. The undocumented rumors of privilege and improper activities that stemmed from these buildings over the years are immense - inflated bills, shady deals with builders, wrong or over-budgeted tenders and of course the endless favors granted to everyone who knows 'someone' for free tickets, good seats in matches, meetings with famous cricketers etc.
While this is true of most sports bodies, let alone other cricketing associations, from the statements of various cricketers and journalists, it would seem that the mismanagement in Delhi was truly at another level of nepotism. Or so goes the gossip.
The DDCA by itself would probably not have attracted any attention as such. Even if it was a 'daddies club' for the members, it is a private club and what the members did with their time and money was their business. This was fine as long as there was no real money. But things changed in 2004 when the grand-daddy of all cricket clubs in India, the mighty (and super rich) Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) began to dole out its largesse in the form of crores of rupees. About Rs 25 crores a year, as per one estimate.
Now all the patronage and favors and inevitable corruption began to have real heft.
Arun Jaitley joined the DDCA in 1997 and became its president in 1999, a truly meteoric rise for someone with no cricketing background. Co-incidentally it was in 1999 he became a Union Minister in the first NDA government. He headed the DDCA for 14 years.
In between that time, from around 2000 to 2013, the accusations of mismanagement, and the actual chaos that can be laughably called the 'accounts' of the DDCA, have reached some sort of crescendo.
Though Kirti Azad, a former cricketer and a BJP MP from Bihar, has been making the accusations for years and years (he claims to have written some 200 letters to Jaitley asking for explanations) and has raised the issue in Parliament, any real investigation only began in 2011, when the ministry of corporate affairs constituted a three-member team of the Serious Fraud Investigation Office to look into the DDCA.
(The DDCA, unlike most such entities in India, is not a registered Society, but rather registered as a private Company under the companies act, hence the involvement of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs)
The report, which the SFIO finally submitted in 2014 is eye-opening to say the least. A condensed list of the findings are below -
1) The law says cheques have to be issued for all transactions above Rs 20,000. Payments worth crores were made in cash for repairs and construction and maintenance over the years. How someone can be paid lakhs and crores in cash was never explained (were large suitcases of 1000-rupee note bundles used?). And the Executive Committee which is supposed to be responsible for all this claimed ignorance about the whole thing. This has happened many times.
2) Even then, several instances were discovered when multiple bills were issued to multiple companies for the same work. But at least some times this work was actually done. In some instances bills have been issued for years and years with no sign any work was actually done.
3) The Ferozshah Kotla ground is, by any standards, not a very great stadium. In fact it is currently under a cloud and matches happen under a court-appointed judge, since the stadium lacks basic clearances and the DDCA owes some 25 crores in entertainment taxes to the government. overhaul of the management of the DDCA.
The DDCA leases the stadium. Its lease expired in 2002. And at least until 2015 it was never renewed. The DDCA was effectively an illegal occupant who not only held thousands of matches in the place, but spent hundreds of crores on renovations and other constructions. No Delhi authority - municipal or otherwise, have ever checked into the stadium, the lease or the DDCA so far. (Though the AAP government formed a committee to do so in November, 2015. It was this committee's report that Kejriwal claimed the CBI was hunting for in their December raid.)
4) The Ferozshah Kotla stadium was renovated from 2002 to 2007 at a cost anywhere from 110 crores to 130 crores. The original budget was about 25 crores. No real explanation for why the construction budget ballooned so astronomically has been provided, and Jaitley was the President during this period. (Jaitley claims the corruption came after he left in 2013).
5) The stadium and various other constructions in it (like corporate boxes for high-paying fans) lack basic safety and 'no objection' clearance certificates from relevant government authorities. Whether these certificates were rejected, or never given or never even applied for, is not clear. DDCA president S.P. Bansal said - "The no objection or the clearance certificates would come only after a certain property matter with the government is settled. It is settled now. We will get the clearance soon,"
6) The DDCA receives around Rs 25 to 35 crores per year from the BCCI. The DDCA also received some Rs 20-30 crores between 2008 and 2011 for the IPL matches held in the Kotla. The DDCA also runs hundreds of smaller clubs, training institutes and conducts many matches, all of which are charge high participation fees. The fate of these funds is largely confused in a mess of bad accounting practices.
These are some of the charges. There are others involving corporate practices as well. The actual running of the DDCA is supposed to be like a private company, since it is registered as such. But the management practices, with things like proxy votes in the name of members who never attend any meetings and the hiring of many employees who seem to have no actual job to do, are hazy and convoluted.
And there are still others as well. For example, the DDCA is listed as charitable organization, which is not supposed to making commercial profits - as per the law. And yet they have been leasing out properties for commercial activities for years, no with no government authority looking into the matter.
Chetan Chauhan, who currently heads the DDCA, rejected all charges. He said -
"No embezzlement took place during Jaitley's tenure. You can check SFIO report. There were only procedural lapses and we have compounded (paid fine) for those lapses."
Despite all this money over the years, as of right now, the DDCA is officially nearly bankrupt. It cannot afford to pay the government some 25 crores in entertainment taxes and is currently under a Delhi court ordered sanction, with a judge overlooking the affairs of the company.
http://www.sify.com/news/arun-jaitl...orruption-go-news-national-pmsnGIfefgjah.html
The DDCA by itself would probably not have attracted any attention as such. Even if it was a 'daddies club' for the members, it is a private club and what the members did with their time and money was their business. This was fine as long as there was no real money. But things changed in 2004 when the grand-daddy of all cricket clubs in India, the mighty (and super rich) Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) began to dole out its largesse in the form of crores of rupees. About Rs 25 crores a year, as per one estimate.
Now all the patronage and favors and inevitable corruption began to have real heft.
Arun Jaitley joined the DDCA in 1997 and became its president in 1999, a truly meteoric rise for someone with no cricketing background. Co-incidentally it was in 1999 he became a Union Minister in the first NDA government. He headed the DDCA for 14 years.
In between that time, from around 2000 to 2013, the accusations of mismanagement, and the actual chaos that can be laughably called the 'accounts' of the DDCA, have reached some sort of crescendo.
Though Kirti Azad, a former cricketer and a BJP MP from Bihar, has been making the accusations for years and years (he claims to have written some 200 letters to Jaitley asking for explanations) and has raised the issue in Parliament, any real investigation only began in 2011, when the ministry of corporate affairs constituted a three-member team of the Serious Fraud Investigation Office to look into the DDCA.
(The DDCA, unlike most such entities in India, is not a registered Society, but rather registered as a private Company under the companies act, hence the involvement of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs)
The report, which the SFIO finally submitted in 2014 is eye-opening to say the least. A condensed list of the findings are below -
1) The law says cheques have to be issued for all transactions above Rs 20,000. Payments worth crores were made in cash for repairs and construction and maintenance over the years. How someone can be paid lakhs and crores in cash was never explained (were large suitcases of 1000-rupee note bundles used?). And the Executive Committee which is supposed to be responsible for all this claimed ignorance about the whole thing. This has happened many times.
2) Even then, several instances were discovered when multiple bills were issued to multiple companies for the same work. But at least some times this work was actually done. In some instances bills have been issued for years and years with no sign any work was actually done.
3) The Ferozshah Kotla ground is, by any standards, not a very great stadium. In fact it is currently under a cloud and matches happen under a court-appointed judge, since the stadium lacks basic clearances and the DDCA owes some 25 crores in entertainment taxes to the government. overhaul of the management of the DDCA.
The DDCA leases the stadium. Its lease expired in 2002. And at least until 2015 it was never renewed. The DDCA was effectively an illegal occupant who not only held thousands of matches in the place, but spent hundreds of crores on renovations and other constructions. No Delhi authority - municipal or otherwise, have ever checked into the stadium, the lease or the DDCA so far. (Though the AAP government formed a committee to do so in November, 2015. It was this committee's report that Kejriwal claimed the CBI was hunting for in their December raid.)
4) The Ferozshah Kotla stadium was renovated from 2002 to 2007 at a cost anywhere from 110 crores to 130 crores. The original budget was about 25 crores. No real explanation for why the construction budget ballooned so astronomically has been provided, and Jaitley was the President during this period. (Jaitley claims the corruption came after he left in 2013).
5) The stadium and various other constructions in it (like corporate boxes for high-paying fans) lack basic safety and 'no objection' clearance certificates from relevant government authorities. Whether these certificates were rejected, or never given or never even applied for, is not clear. DDCA president S.P. Bansal said - "The no objection or the clearance certificates would come only after a certain property matter with the government is settled. It is settled now. We will get the clearance soon,"
6) The DDCA receives around Rs 25 to 35 crores per year from the BCCI. The DDCA also received some Rs 20-30 crores between 2008 and 2011 for the IPL matches held in the Kotla. The DDCA also runs hundreds of smaller clubs, training institutes and conducts many matches, all of which are charge high participation fees. The fate of these funds is largely confused in a mess of bad accounting practices.
These are some of the charges. There are others involving corporate practices as well. The actual running of the DDCA is supposed to be like a private company, since it is registered as such. But the management practices, with things like proxy votes in the name of members who never attend any meetings and the hiring of many employees who seem to have no actual job to do, are hazy and convoluted.
And there are still others as well. For example, the DDCA is listed as charitable organization, which is not supposed to making commercial profits - as per the law. And yet they have been leasing out properties for commercial activities for years, no with no government authority looking into the matter.
Chetan Chauhan, who currently heads the DDCA, rejected all charges. He said -
"No embezzlement took place during Jaitley's tenure. You can check SFIO report. There were only procedural lapses and we have compounded (paid fine) for those lapses."
Despite all this money over the years, as of right now, the DDCA is officially nearly bankrupt. It cannot afford to pay the government some 25 crores in entertainment taxes and is currently under a Delhi court ordered sanction, with a judge overlooking the affairs of the company.
http://www.sify.com/news/arun-jaitl...orruption-go-news-national-pmsnGIfefgjah.html
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