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In his wildest dreams, Indian Premier League Commissioner Lalit Modi would not have thought that his disclosure of the Kochi franchise’s ownership structure on Twitter would open up a Pandora’s Box. Unfortunately for Modi, that tweet of his has snowballed into a major controversy and has already resulted in Shashi Tharoor resigning from his position as India’s minister of state for external affairs over the Kochi franchise deal.

Modi’s tweet indicated that Tharoor had a conflict of interest in his mentoring Rendezvous Sports World – the consortium behind the Kochi franchise – through their successful bid as his close friend Sunanda Pushkar had a 4.7% “free equity” stake in the franchise. On her part, Pushkar who has now given up that stake, vehemently denied she was acting as Tharoor’s proxy and added Rendezvous gave her the equity as payment for her marketing expertise and help in putting the bid together. The opposition party as a part of its attack on Tharoor said he should have disclosed his link to Pushkar earlier. All along, Tharoor maintained that he didn’t have a personal stake in and didn’t stand to gain monetarily from Rendezvous Sports’ winning bid now or at a later stage, but this obviously wasn’t enough to placate the hyenas who were baying for his blood.

In his defence of the tweet that started this entire controversy, which I personally feel is a needless one, Modi said: “The only reason we did it (disclose the identities) was that even those who presented the bid documents did not know who the owners were”. While the veracity of that statement is open to debate, what Modi should have realised was by expressing his concerns on a social network, he was breaching the confidentiality clause in the bid documents. As could be expected, the owners of the Kochi franchise, who paid $333.33 million for the team, have asked the IPL to reveal ownership details of the nine other franchises, and it isn’t yet clear if those would be revealed.

This sordid saga became murkier when Satyajit Gaekwad, CEO of Rendezvous Sports World, alleged that Modi had offered the consortium $50 million to “quit the game and get out” soon after their successful bid for the Kochi franchise. Gaekwad also raised a pertinent question when he said the consortium would have been unable to win the bid had Modi not known who the owners were.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) was also not impressed by Modi’s disclosures and the board’s president Shashank Manohar wrote a strongly worded letter to the IPL Commissioner pulling him up for his actions. As fallout of Modi’s tweet, the BCCI has received a summons from the Income-Tax department to furnish complete details of all eight original IPL franchises. The taxmen have already carried out inspections of the IPL’s offices and Modi’s residence in Mumbai and also the Kings XI Punjab franchise office in Mohali. The Indian government has also stepped up the pressure by saying all aspects of the IPL are under scrutiny. While the I-T department is already looking into the IPL’s funding, there are suggestions that the Corporate Affairs ministry is planning an investigation of the manner in which the league’s franchises are run.

There are now indications that the ramifications of Modi’s tweet haven’t impressed senior BCCI officials, and the board would look to curtail his powers in its working committee meeting on May 2. But, before that Modi will have to face the IPL governing council in its meeting on April 25, and while he is expected to explain his side of the story there, his detractors are preparing to attack him in that meeting. Modi, who met Harshad Mehta, the new chairman of the Kochi franchise in Dubai, said he is optimistic of resolving the crisis; and added he has no differences with the BCCI.

In the three years since its inception, the IPL has turned into a money-spinner on many counts and is also a roaring sporting success. It is quite apparent that Modi wasn’t happy with Kochi joining the IPL family, and would have preferred another bid (possibly Ahmedabad) to have come through instead, and used Twitter as a platform to discredit Rendezvous Sports World and possibly force them to take back their bid. Tharoor had also said the Kochi consortium’s successful bid “upset the plans of a lot of powerful people, who had wanted the franchise to go elsewhere”.

The IPL is Modi’s baby, and it is unfortunate that things have come to a stage where he has himself unwillingly opened up a can of worms and exposed the league to unnecessary scrutiny. There is no doubt the IPL will survive, but the question remains whether Modi will be able to withstand the tsunami that is waiting to engulf him and question his credibility.