Union Minister Shashi Tharoor on Monday scored perhaps his first victory in a controversy in Kerala when Youth Congress activists forced the Kerala Cricket Association to apologise to him for a statement made by its president against him in an issue concerning the waterlogging of a stadium which resulted in the cancellation of the Duleep Trophy finals.
Coming after the defeats he had faced in the controversies over his wife Sunanda Pushkar’s sweat equity in the Kochi IPl team and his Twitter tweet on cattle class air travels in India, this small victory may seem to be of immense importance to him but observers are not fully convinced about the fairness of the way he achieved it.
Tharoor had entered into a statement war with the KCA by tweeting on the Twitter over the reason why the Duleep Trophy Cricket Tournament’s semi-finals and finals could not be played at the Jawaharlal Nehru International Stadium in Kochi due to waterlogging of the pitch, outfield and the entire ground even after huge sums were spent on drainage system work.
Tharoor wanted to know where the Rs8 crore spent (now said to be Rs18 crore) on the drainage system had gone, in a clear move to charge the KCA with corruption. However, the KCA was not prepared to remain silent towards the criticism and its president TC Mathew said such statements were part of a deliberate attempt to malign the association.
Mathew indirectly accused Tharoor of being a pawn in the hands of a lobby that was working against the KCA by stating that this lobby was trying to prevent the efforts of the association to have its own stadium. He even went to the extent of stating that Tharoor was perhaps miffed at not being made an office-bearer of the KCA.
After a day of allegations and counter-allegations between those who supported and opposed the KCA, the battle was taken over by Youth Congress activists in Kochi on Monday, a day when the Duleep Trophy finals were totally abandoned as the pitch and outfield at the stadium remained soaked in rain water.
Just before noon, a group of about 50 Youth Congress activists barged in to the office of the KCA at the Jawaharlal Nehru International Stadium pulling down its sign and threatening to create even more trouble. They gheraoed KCA secretary, TN Ananthanarayanan, demanding an apology for Mathew’s outburst against Tharoor.
The association, which said that Mathew’s statement had nothing to do with it, was not at first prepared to tender that apology the Youth Congress workers were demanding. However, they relented after they understood that prolongation of the standoff would be detrimental to their interests.
Giving clear indications that the controversy was not going to die down easily, Congress leader and Greater Cochin Development Authority chairman N Venugopal hit out at Tharoor saying that he should not have made such a public statement through a tweet when, as a Union Minister, he had avenues to take up the matter more seriously and directly.
“Being a Union Minister he has direct ways to inquire into such things. The Thiruvananthapuram lobby has been trying to block development projects of Kochi. There is nothing wrong in suspecting that Tharoor’s statement is part of that bid,” said Venugopal. Shashi Tharoor is the Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram.
Meanwhile, the entire Duleep Trophy finals were cancelled as the ground remained waterlogged and the finalists, the North Zone and the South Zone, were declared joint winners. The KCA, at the same time, decided to engage a Malaysian company for developing a perfectly effective drainage system at the stadium. Work on this may start by Wednesday.