Sharad Pawar and his daughter have denied allegations that his family was involved in bidding for a cricket team in the Indian Premier League (IPL) in the last round of auctions held in March. (Read: No role, says Supriya Sule)

Pawar, who is Agriculture Minister in the UPA government, and his family, own 16 per cent in City Corporation, a Pune construction company that  offered Rs 1200 crore for an IPL team. The bid for a Pune franchise was won by Sahara which paid Rs 1700 crore.

Pawar says that the board of City Corporation decided against making any offers for IPL, but that the company's Managing Director, Anirudha Deshpande, participated in the IPL auction as an individual. "The board took a unanimous decision not (to get) involved. (But) the managing director was eager to get associated with the bidding process, so he was allowed in his individual capacity...in (the Board's) resolution, it was made absolutely clear that there is no direct or indirect involvement of any shareholder other then Mr Deshpande personally," said Pawar at a press conference on Friday.

The Agriculture Minister also used in his defence the fact that the City Corporation bid lost to Sahara. "I was somebody in that organisation. Had I used any influence, do you think it would have lost the bid?" he asked.

Speaking to NDTV in Pune, Deshpande defended Pawar. "This has nothing to do with the Pawar family. I bid for the team in my Individual capacity. There is an attempt to defame the Pawars," said Deshpande.

Pawar said on Friday that Deshpande wanted to own a team in collaboration with a Mumbai-based company named Akruti and the Maharashtra Cricket Association. In addition to his Cabinet position, Pawar is the president of the Maharashtra Cricket Association.

Pawar, and his deputy, Praful Patel, have repeatedly issued denials that they own proxy or undeclared holdings in IPL teams. The multi-billion-dollar IPL has been dealt a fierce controversy this season by the man who single-handedly created the league, Lalit Modi. In the last few months, IPL-gate has cost Modi and minister Shashi Tharoor their jobs, along with provoking the government to launch a nationwide inquiry into the funding and taxes of the IPL.

In April, Modi unleashed a series of searing tweets that alleged that Tharoor, then Minister of State for External Affairs, had an illicit interest in the new Kochi team whose owners had gifted equity worth Rs 70 crores to the minister's girlfriend, Sunanda Pushkar. According to Modi, the minister tried to dissuade him from questioning who the consortium really included. Tharoor was forced to quit in a din of accusations that he had misused his office.

The heat then shifted with blazing intensity to Modi, whose lone-ranger style of functioning and arrogance meant he had never been popular with the sport's uber-body, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). Modi was suspended as Chairman of the IPL, accused, among other things, of swinging team bids in favour of family and friends, and of accepting a Rs 80-crore kickback in a controversial deal for the IPL's telecast rights.
As the government launched a multi-city inquiry, with raids at offices of the different IPL team-owners, the dark side of the gazillion-wattage IPL started overshadowing the league's most profitable season ever. Sources said early investigations showed that politicians were among those suspected of proxy holdings.

Pawar, often seen as one of the country's biggest practitioners of cricket power, was referred to in different media reports that suggested he had tried to influence the bids for the new franchises created in March. Both Pawar and his daughter, Supriya Sule, who is an MP, said their family had "no direct or indirect" role in the bidding process.

Pawar's deputy, Praful Patel, also went on record to say that his only link with the IPL was that his daughter is a junior employee. An email trail established that before the Kochi group backed by Tharoor made its bid, Patel requested BCCI president Shashank Manohar to email a sort of  business plan projection to his office. This plan was then forwarded by Patel's office to Tharoor.