Arvind Kejriwal charged Jaitley on my info: Kirti Azad

NEW DELHI: On Saturday, a couple of days before the Supreme Court delivers a verdict on the country’s cricket administration based on the Justice RM Lodha Committee’s recommendations, Delhi assembly speaker

Ram Niwas Goel

permitted the media to sit in on the proceedings of a special inquiry committee constituted by the Delhi House to probe the alleged irregularities in the Delhi and

District Cricket Association

(DDCA).

According to the assembly secretariat, this is the first time in the country that the media has been allowed to witness the proceedings of a specially instituted inquiry panel. The committee of nine members, all of them Aam Aadmi Party MLAs, is chaired by Greater Kailash MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj. They have been mandated to probe the alleged irregularities and corruption in the administration of cricket and hockey in the capital.

While this opening up of the proceedings was cited as an “experiment” in keeping with the terms of reference of the committee and on the request of the panel members, the timing of the decision and the fact that this was not the first sitting of the panel has got the BJP, which sits in the opposition in the assembly, questioning the intent behind the move.

On Saturday, former India cricketer and suspended BJP MP Kirti Azad, former India captain Bishan Bedi, former India wicketkeeper Surinder Khanna and Sameer Bahadur deposed before the inquiry committee. The political tensions between Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and union finance minister Arun Jaitley, a former president of DDCA, soon came to the fore when Somnath Bharti brought up the tenability of the defamation charges filed against Kejriwal by Jaitley.

“Do you agree Mr Kejriwal was only quoting you when he spoke against Mr Jaitley regarding the alleged irregularities in DDCA?” Bharti asked Azad. Azad could only nod and reply, “Yes, I can say whatever was said by him was based on information provided by me.” While Azad asserted that he had no personal enmity against anyone and was there only to raise his voice against corruption, it is pertinent that his wife, Poonam Azad, recently joined AAP.

When a panel member prodded Azad to talk about his suspension from BJP and whether Jaitley was responsible for it, Azad dodged the question saying, “The terms of reference of this meeting aren’t about my political party and my suspension. My battle isn’t against Jaitley. It is against the DDCA president who presided over corruption in the association.”

While the committee tried to steer clear of selection issues, the deposers did claim that the government still had a role to play in eradicating corruption in the cricket set-up. Bedi pointed out, “There are government schools that indulge in providing fake birth certificates, but police don’t investigate such age frauds.”