IPL council to decide
The IPL governing council will meet on April 26 and take a unanimous decision on the way ahead from the current controversy, Sharad Pawar, the ICC's president-elect, has said. Pawar's statement came after a meeting with the BCCI president, Shashank Manohar, in Delhi on a day thick with rumour and speculation over the fate of Lalit Modi, the IPL commissioner.
Modi is en route from Dubai, where he attended an ICC meeting, to Delhi where he is expected to meet Pawar later on Tuesday. It is being widely speculated that Modi's role in the IPL will be diminished, if not altogether curtailed. He has not made any public statements in the past few days save one on Monday declaring he was willing to cooperate with any investigation.
Pawar, who spoke to a scrum of journalists outside his house, said neither he nor Manohar had the authority to take a unilateral decision on Modi's fate and that it was best left to the governing council. "Our (BCCI) total approach in the Governing Council will be to take collective, unanimous decisions, and give future direction to Indian cricket," he said.
Asked whether Modi would accept the governing council's decision, Pawar said, "Don't forget Mr Modi is also a vice president of the BCCI and our total approach and past experience [is], we always take collective and unanimous decision that everyone is party to, including I hope Lalit Modi."
His statement followed talks with two of the senior-most members of the federal government, which has directed a wide-ranging and coordinated series of investigations of the BCCI, IPL and the franchises that comprise the league.
Removing Modi is not a simple matter for the IPL's governing council or the BCCI, though both have the powers to do so. Modi was appointed to his post by Pawar, when the latter was BCCI president, and any move to remove him would have to go through Pawar, who retains considerable influence in Indian cricket and who has publicly backed Modi.
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