Indian Premier League chairman Lalit Modi has been suspended by the Indian cricket board one day before an IPL governing council meeting over allegations of corruption in the Twenty20 competition. Shashank Manohar, the president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, announced the decision to suspend Modi Sunday. Manohar says the “alleged acts of individual misdemeanors” of Modi have “brought a bad name to the administration of cricket and the game itself.” Indian lawmakers have called for a parliamentary inquiry into claims franchises had been sold for millions of dollars without accounting for the source of the funds. Manohar says Modi has 15 days to show why “disciplinary action should not be taken against him.” Earlier, before he received the notice, he said he would attend governing council meetin. “I will attend and chair the meeting of the GC (governing council) as chairman and commissioner,” Modi announced on microblogging website Twitter. He had previously said he would refuse to go, saying he needed more time to prepare a proper response to the allegations. The tax probe began after junior foreign minister Shashi Tharoor was forced to resign over claims that his friend was given a free stake worth $15 million in a new franchise. Details of the ownership of the team in Kochi were leaked on Twitter by Modi. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee ordered the probe last week amid allegations from the political opposition that the IPL was a front for money laundering and illegal betting.
