IPL 2016: At DDCA, clamour for passes again before KXIP vs DD

The club secretary has written to Justice (retired) Mukul Mudgal, appointed by the Delhi High Court to oversee the IPL matches at the Feroz Shah Kotla, about how committees set-up by him are not being allowed to function independently. “I have written to justice Mudgal about treasurer Manchanda taking 2,600 complimentary passes and not allowing us to function independently. Justice Mudgal has approved these committees but directors want to do as they please,” Jain added.

Manchanda claims he has given the passes to DDCA vice-president Chetan Chauhan who in turn has returned the passes to GMR. “Chauhan has signed on the receiving letter for 7,000 complimentary passes issued from GMR. If the ticketing and accreditation committee want to distribute the passes, they must collect it from GMR and sign on the receiving letter,” Manchanda said.

When a tournament is around the corner, complimentary passes, which entitle the holder to watch a match from premium seats without paying a penny, are much sought after by DDCA’s directors. Complimentary passes are handed out by directors to keep their respective proxy vote base happy and also to senior government and police officers.

A similar scenario played out at the DDCA recently — ahead of the South Africa Test in December and World T20.

For World T20, directors were unhappy after Justice Mudgal put a cap of 10 complimentary passes. A section of the directors protested by returning the passes for the early round games in the hope that Justice Mudgal would relent and increase the number of passes for the first semifinal of the World T20.

Jumbo committees

DDCA officials also chose to ignore previous diktats from Justice Mudgal to limit the number of members in committees to only three. They went ahead and created up to seven posts in certain committees created for the IPL, though their tasks for the tournament is minimal compared to when the association hosts an international match. For example the reception committee and the stadium facilities committee comprised seven officials. The hospitality committee, the administrative committee and the grounds committee had six each.

However, Justice Mudgal trimmed down the number to three in each of the committees. In a letter addressed to Sunil Valson, the former medium pacer, who is the ‘point of contact’, Justice Mudgal wrote: “After inputs from IMG and GMR it has become evident that mostly all the committees formed by DDCA will have very limited or no role in IPL. Therefore in light of the above I am attaching the revised Committee List having only 3 members in each committee.

“This has only been done as there were three- member committees in the WT20 matches to ensure continuity. It is made clear that as there is a very limited role of these committees in IPL, hence no further request from any committee will be entertained for additional members for assisting the committee.”