Indian government will face a no-confidence vote as cricket corruption crisis deepens

League founder faces 22 charges in scandal

The Indian government will face a no-confidence vote today amid the deepening crisis over its ministers' alleged involvement in a cricket corruption scandal.

The Congress Party of Manmohan Singh, the prime minister, faces a parliamentary motion over a series of controversies, including allegations the government tapped senior politicians' telephones.
The crisis deepened Monday when Lalit Modi, the founder of the Indian Premier League (IPL), was suspended and charged with 22 counts of corruption. They included allegations that he accepted kickbacks, manipulated auctions for new teams and took share-holdings using family members as proxies.
Modi, recently lauded for turning the IPL into a £3.8-billion business, was accused of receiving a substantial share of a $80-million "facilitation fee" paid for television rights.
He is also accused of holding a 45-per-cent stake in the Rajasthan Royals through his brother-in-law. The Royals, fronted by the Bollywood and Big Brother star Shilpa Shetty, are now being investigated by the tax authorities and the cricket authorities.
Tax inspectors are also investigating overseas investments in the team by its shareholders, including Lachlan Murdoch, to see whether they breached tax and foreign exchange laws.
Murdoch, the son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, is believed to hold a 32-per-cent stake through his company Blue Water Estate.
Modi's suspension has serious political implications since he is regarded as a protege of Sharad Pawar, the leader of a key coalition partner, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).
Relations between Congress and the NCP have deteriorated in recent weeks. Shashi Tharoor, a Congress minister, resigned after Modi disclosed that the minister's girlfriend had received a $14.7-million stake in an IPL team.
His departure provoked new allegations not just against Modi, but also against his patrons, Pawar, and Praful Patel, the aviation minister.
Pawar's son-in-law was revealed as a shareholder in a company that fixed the IPL's television rights deal.
On Sunday, Modi was banned from a meeting of the IPL's general committee and told he would be reinstated only if he could refute the allegations against him.
Shashank Manohar, the president of the Board of Control of Cricket in India, said Modi had awarded franchises to frontmen who were not the true owners.
"Modi made a statement that the entire world knows who the shareholders are but the fact is that not even the governing council members know about Rajasthan Royals," he said.
"I did not find the names of Shilpa Shetty and Raj Kundra -Shetty's husband -in the papers and they claim to be stakeholders."