New Delhi/Mumbai, April 14: Caught in the eye of a storm in the wake of a IPL-related controversy, minister of state for external affairs Shashi Tharoor was summoned for an hour-long meeting with senior Cabinet ministers Pranab Mukherjee and A.K. Antony on Wednesday evening amid widespread speculation that he might be asked to step down to prevent any further embarrassment to the government.
Mr Tharoor did not speak to the waiting reporters as he left Mr Mukherjee’s Talkatora Road residence. Mr Mukherjee, who is the seniormost Cabinet minister in Delhi in the Prime Minister’s absence, also did not speak to the press. Earlier in the evening, however, Mr Tharoor categorically ruled out resignation from the Union government amid a rising clamour for it from Opposition parties.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, speaking to reporters in Washington before leaving for the IBSA and BRIC summits in Brazil, said he could not go by “hearsay”, and that any action on the matter, if needed, would be taken only after “all the facts” had been ascertained after his return to New Delhi.
In another development, the minister’s office complained to the Delhi police that Mr Tharoor had received a death threat on his mobile phone from the Dawood Ibrahim gang via SMS asking him to not be a mentor of the Kochi IPL team. The police found that the SMS was sent from Delhi, and one person was detained for a while, and then released.
The complaint was sent to the police by the minister’s close aide, Mr Jacob Joseph.
The late-evening meeting at Mr Mukherjee’s residence is believed to have been prompted by the government’s concern over what the Opposition parties might say or do in Parliament when the Budget Session resumes on Thursday after a three-week break. Both the BJP and the CPI(M) have demanded Mr Tharoor’s resignation.
Mr Tharoor, who is being accused of misuse of public office to benefit a close friend, Sunanda Pushkar, said Wednesday that the allegations were “false and motivated”, and denied any wrongdoing.
Ms Pushkar, who is in Dubai, also issued a statement saying she was not a “proxy” for Mr Tharoor. The statement read: “My own business interests and assets are substantial, and efforts to besmirch Tharoor by presenting me as a proxy for him are personally insulting for me as a woman and as a friend.” She added: “I have built up a respectable and successful career while coping with widowhood and raising a child as a single mother. Yet I have been reduced to a caricature in the media, portrayed with inaccuracies and falsehoods.”
In New Delhi, police sources said initial investigations into the death threat to the minister had led them to one Manik Talla, a health trainer at the Constitution Club on Rafi Marg, as the mobile number from which the SMS had been sent was registered in his name.
Investigations revealed, however, that Talla had lost his driving licence a few days ago, and the police suspects that someone who got hold of it might have misused it and got a new SIM card with fake identity. Talla was briefly detained by the police for questioning and subsequently released. The police sources said messages had also been sent to senior CPI(M) leader Brinda Karat and Rajya Sabha MP Mahmood A. Madani using the same SIM card.
In Mumbai, meanwhile, IPL commissioner Lalit Modi defended himself at a press conference on the issue of making public the names of the IPL Kochi franchisees. Mr Modi said while details about the other IPL team owners were known, this was not so in case of the Kochi team. He added that he had revealed the names of the IPL Kochi stakeholders because even the shareholders did not know who the franchisees were.
Age Correspondents