Sunanda Pushkar, who has been linked to the Indian Premier League (IPL) Kochi team controversy, on Wednesday blasted her critics and denied acting as a proxy for her friend and Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor.
Sunanda Pushkar, who has been linked to the Indian Premier League (IPL) Kochi team controversy, on Wednesday blasted her critics and denied acting as a proxy for her friend and Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor.
In a hard-hitting statement, Pushkar accused the media of ignoring her professional background and international business experience and focussing "obsessively on my personal life as if a woman cannot be capable of professional or financial success.
ADVERTISEMENT
"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.
"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," she said.
Pushkar said she was issuing the statement "to set the record straight about my role in the public controversy surrounding the Kerala IPL Team franchise".
The controversy erupted after Indian Premier League (IPL) Commissioner Lalit Modi revealed the ownership pattern of Kochi IPL, stating that Pushkar, a friend of Tharoor, owned free equity in Rendezvous Sports, which is a part owner of IPL Kochi team.
Modi also accused Tharoor of asking him not to reveal the ownership details - a charge denied by the minister.
Pushkar said she was approached last year by Rendezvous "inviting me to associate myself with them as a consultant in their various sporting activities and particularly in their potential bid to acquire the franchise of an IPL team.
"I had previously been approached by Karim Morani of Kolkata Knight Riders to join them in a similar capacity and had regretted that the timing was not convenient for me.
Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest news!" Click here!
