Merchant

With business spread across the eastern coastline, Warrier has recently forayed into the prized Great Barrier Reef market with the acquisition of Ocean Spirit Cruises.

is, don’t CC an email unless it is absolutely essential.

email is banned when you can speak on and resolve little things instantly. We work on the principle that winners have parties, while losers have meetings. Our proactive management team enjoys winning and loves a no-report-writing culture,” added Warrier jokingly.

Likewise, keeping abreast with technology has allowed him to maintain efficient bottom lines. “Particularly in the context of variable market conditions and threat of the GFC, we need sophisticated technology to forecast trends. In addition, being a family-owned business, we are nimble and agile to quickly adapt to any market changes,” stated Warrier.

Business aside, family and sport form the Holy Trinity for Sudhir Warrier. He enjoys spending quality time with his wife and daughter, and weekends are often spent hosting a relaxed barbecue for friends at his harbourside home.

Warrier shares his mantra in life saying, “Australia is definitely not a saver’s paradise. It is a great lifestyle destination. Don’t come here to make money, instead work hard and live well.”

As Sydney’s enviable harbour switches on its class act with a heady mix of lights, sights and cityscape, Warrier’s opulent fleet transports tourists into the mystical world of getaway tourism.

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Indian American to groom US Muslims for public service

A Mysore-born Indian American public affairs specialist has been charged with revitalising the Muslim Public Service Network that grooms young American Muslims for public service and to take on civic leadership positions.

“I believe that MPSN needs to form strong alliances with organizations in the US, while working to stabilise its flagship Summer Fellowship programme,” said Sabith Khan, the new executive director about his task of revitalising the organisation founded in 1994.

“I believe we need to also engage our stake-holders and community in a creative way, so they come together and give back and re-learn the meaning of community development,” Khan, who “lived in Bangalore for most of my life” before coming to the US said recently.

Over the last 18 years, a few fellows of the programme have gone on to make a name in public service. The most prominent is Rashad Hussain, son of a mining engineer from Bihar, who was named by President Barack Obama as US Special Envoy to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

“The American Muslim community is among the richest, best educated communities there is, and has been consistently giving back to the country,” Khan said. “But one area where it lacks substantial contribution is in the area of Public policy.”

“With my understanding of public policy and civic engagement, I believe I can make a deep impact on the organization and help it move forward; and grow in size and also partnerships/ alliances,” said Khan, who has a Masters in Public Administration from the Maxwell School of Syracuse University.

“MPSN is at a stage where they needed someone to stabilise the program and also grow its support base, while maintaining its high quality programming. I believe I will be able to do that, going forward,” he added.

Building the next generation of South Asian American leaders

Sam Arora is a Maryland state Delegate, Aaron “Ronnie” Chatterji served on President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) and Hari Kondabalu is a rising comedy star just back from an India tour to spread religious harmony.

The three Indian Americans could not be more different from each other. Yet they have one thing in common. They are alumni of the Washington Leadership Programme (WLP) dedicated to building the next generation of Indian and South Asian American leaders.

The organidation was founded in August 2008 in memory of pioneering Indian American publisher and philanthropist Gopal Raju, who sponsored a programme that placed over 170 students in eight-week summer Congressional internships over 15 years through his Indian American Centre for Political Awareness.

Over a hundred students who have applied for the programme this summer would be whittled down to about ten after a three stage “very intense” selection process, Harin Contractor, a 2003 alum who serves on the board of the programme now run by the alumni of Raju’s programme, said.

“We actually just used to do exclusively Capitol Hill,” he said, “but with the influx of South Asians being appointed to the administration, who have been knocking at our doors for quality interns, we have extended the opportunity to government agencies.”

For the first time last year, WLP placed student interns in the departments of commerce, labour and transportation.

Arora, “one of a handful Desi elected officials in the country”, who worked on three of then-Senator Hillary Clinton’s campaigns and also volunteered for Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign, had a “really eye opening experience” as a 2002 alum as he “had not considered what it meant to be an Indian American in public service.”

“The most valuable part of WLP was the mentorship because in politics you really need to cultivate mentors to succeed,” said Arora, who was a member of Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley’s recent trade mission to India.

“I think, I relate better with the Indian American community now. I represent all people my constituency, but I also feel a duty to be looking out for the greater Indian American community that is part of the great Indian diaspora,” he said.

The programme made three get-to-know trips to India from 2003 to 2005 with six students each “to connect young leaders of Indian origin with political leaders there,” said Contractor who was on the original trip to India that was organised in association with the Society for Policy Studies in New Delhi.

“It was interesting to see after my summer in DC, the contrast, the political style and the government style between the two of the oldest and largest democracies,” he said.

Looking to grow in the next five years, WLP is now plans to raise the number of interns to 20 as also making it year round programme.

Expansion of the programme from only Washington to New York, Chicago, Atlanta, California is also on the cards to give students opportunities to intern with local members.

Nigeria attracts enterprising Indians despite terror

With major Indian interests in Nigeria in the areas of trade and investment, the west African country’s huge economic potential continues to be a big draw for Indians despite recent terror attacks, one of which killed 160 people, including an Indian, in January.

Coordinated attacks carried out by the Boko Haram sect, known to have ties with

Al Qaeda, targeted the security forces Jan 20 in Kano city. Kevalkumar Kalidas Rajput, 23, who hailed from Gujarat and had been working for Kano-based company M/s Relchem since March 2011, was killed.

Boko Haram is an Islamist group that says it is against Western education and has vowed to implement Sharia law. Many people across the northern part of the country are known to have been killed or maimed in their bomb attacks.

These incidents would not deter others because “with an annual bilateral trade in excess of $13 billion, India continued to be Nigeria’s second largest trading partner”, Indian High Commissioner in Abuja Mahesh Sachdev said in a recent speech.

“We were the largest investor-country in Nigeria in 2010 and major new Indian investments were announced in 2011. India’s Airtel alone is amidst a $600 million network expansion plan in Nigeria,” Sachdev added.

It is not only Indians who are visiting Nigeria.

Figures show that “nearly 33,000 Nigerians got Indian visas during 2011 - up 40 percent on 2010”, he said, adding: “... India has become a destination of choice for Nigerians seeking state-of-the-art healthcare combining quality with affordability”.

With a population of 158 million and considerable revenue from oil exports, Nigeria is the largest trading partner of India in Africa.

The Indian community in Nigeria is estimated to be 35,000-strong. Most Indians in the country are well-off and enjoy a noncontroversial existence.

Wall Street Sheriff Preet Bharara on Time cover

]dian-American attorney Preet Bharara, nicknamed the Sheriff of Wall Street for prosecuting the likes of Rajat Gupta, the poster boy of Indian business in America, has made it to the cover of Time magazine.

“This man is busting Wall Street” screams the cover of the magazine detailing Ferozepur-born Bharara’s anti-corruption crusade as the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

“US Attorney Preet Bharara has already taken down some of the financial world’s most prominent figures. He’s just getting started,” notes the cover story written by Bill Saporito and Massimo Calabresi.

After successfully winning the conviction of Sri Lankan American hedge fund tycoon Raj Rajaratnam for insider trading, he is now prosecuting Gupta, former McKinsey head and a former Goldman Sachs director, for allegedly giving tips to Rajaratnam.

Born to a Sikh father and a Hindu mother, 43-year-old Bharara grew in New Jersey, a State which has a significant IndianAmerican population. He graduated from the prestigious Harvard College in 1990. Bharara’s picture appeared in the latest edition of Time, a day after he announced to have taken action against one of the oldest Swiss banks for having evaded American taxes and helping in flight of US money.

Giving an overview of Bharara’s insidertrading probe to date, it begins with an anecdote of the conference call at hedge fund Level Global Investors Nov 4, 2009 that kicked the investigation into high gear.

Unknown to the participants, Bharara was recording the conversation. He had obtained a secret court order to join the conference call after a confidential informant told his office that the party line was being used illegally to trade inside information.

Sworn in on August 13, 2009, Bharara oversees hundreds of criminal and civil cases, involving international terrorism, financial fraud, insider trading, public corruption, and gang violence, as well as the resolution of alleged civil rights violations at various public venues.

This scientist left US job to fight Maharashtra local polls

He lived in the US for over a decade. But the nanotechnology scientist left his cutting edge work when conscience beckoned him to help change and improve things in his deprived Parda village in the Vidarbha region.

Treading the heat and grime of grassroots politics is 28-year-old Balasaheb S. Darade, who is contesting as an independent candidate from the Pangradole constituency in the Buldhana district council polls scheduled soon.

“I am focussing on three key aspectsrural development, youth empowerment and changing the attitude of people - if they want to see change, they must change themselves,” Darade, who came back to India last year, said in an interview.

Born in Parda village, 450 km southeast of Mumbai, which has now grown into a small town with around 25,000 people, Darade was educated here and in other parts of the state before joining the University of Cincinnati, US, from where he completed his masters in nanotechnology.

“I had always been keen on research, especially nano in solar cells. My work got me a consultancy assignment with US space agency NASA and I worked on the Mars Rover Project on nano solar cells,” he said.

Darade always longed to return to his town and do something for people’s upliftment - almost like Shah Rukh Khan in the movie Swades

During his stay in the US till August 2011, Darade keenly watched and drummed up support for social activist Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption crusade. He also came in contact with spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar in the US and met former president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam on several occasions.

He even formulated plans for a revamp of villages partly by incorporating Hazare’s Ralegan-Siddhi model village principles.

“I launched the Shankar Rural Transformation Project (SRTP) in 20 villages in the Vidarbha region, plagued by farmland suicides, huge unemployment and consequent problems, and depression among the people who feel they have no future,” he said.

“These personalities appreciated my efforts, inspired and encouraged me to enter politics which is abhorred and shunned by the educated class in India,” Darade stated while on the campaign trail.

The SRTP project - dedicated to the memory of his late parents Shankar and Ratnamala, who perished in a fire accident three years ago and his mentor, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar - has taken off with volunteers in each of the target villages.

Darade has taken up SRTP in three parts - sustainable village development projects for solving a village’s need-based problems, individual empowerment, and finally collaboration with government and other agencies.

Initially hoping to contest the state legislature elections in 2014, it was barely two weeks ago that Darade decided to take the plunge into the local body polls - which he said would enable him to study and understand deeply the problems afflicting the rural, agro-based state economy and people’s plight.

Darade has been allotted a ‘cup and saucer’ election symbol, but says he is not bothered about ‘token symbolism’. Instead, he wants to involve the masses in a big way and put them on the path to progress and prosperity.

His public meetings, with audiences ranging from groups of 20 to 8,000 (the biggest till date attended by curious farmers who decided to hear yet another speaker), have short issue-based speeches and are spiced with meditation and chanting of popular folk songs.

“I prefer quality in my meetings. Quantity or big crowds do not really get the message across,” he explained.

Though reluctant to name his main challengers, he said the biggest rivals would be the Shiv Sena with its powerful local MP Prataprao Jadhav and legislator Sanjay Raimulkar, and the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party combine.

Depending solely on public donations, volunteers’ contributions, including sympathizers from India Against Corruption (IAC), and his own meagre resources, Darade moves around in a hired vehicle, armed with his cap that says “Now Change is Certain”, which he distributes to people he meets daily.

He claims that though written off initially, he has now been flooded with messages, letters and e-mails of support. The village youth participation in his campaign has grown manifold.

“I have realised that elections, however small, are a tough job. But in a democracy, elections are a must and it is imperative to elect good representatives at all levels - I have taken the first step towards this change.”

After this experience, Darade hopes to contest the Maharashtra assembly elections due 2014.

Booklets provide guidance to women dumped by NRI spouses

As part of efforts to help women deserted by their non-resident Indian (NRI) husbands, the government has brought out booklets and pamphlets on safeguards, legal remedies and whom to approach for redressal of grievances.

Besides the booklet Marriages to Overseas Indians, the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs has brought out a pamphlet titled “Thinking of the marriage of your daughter with an NRI?” to highlight precautions to be taken before entering into a marriage with an NRI man.

In addition, the National Commission for Women (NCW) - the coordinating agency for dealing with the issues pertaining to NRI marriages - has brought out a pamphlet titled “Problems Relating to NRI Marriages - Dos and Don’ts”.

The pamphlet describes problems related to NRI marriages and suggests precautionary measures for Indian women considering marriage to an NRI or a Person of Indian Origin (PIO). The NCW has also brought out a report on problems relating to NRI marriages, titled “The ‘Nowhere’ Brides”.

According to an official press release, a scheme was launched in 2007 to provide through the Indian missions legal or financial assistance to Indian women deserted or divorced overseas. The scheme was subsequently revised.

The release said the scheme would be available to Indian women who have been deserted by their overseas Indian or foreign husbands or were facing divorce proceedings in a foreign country, subject to the following conditions:

*The marriage of the woman has been solemnized in India or overseas with an overseas Indian or a foreigner

*The woman is deserted in India or overseas within fifteen years of the marriage; or

*Divorce proceedings are initiated within fifteen years of marriage by her overseas Indian or foreign husband; or

*An ex-parte divorce has been obtained by the overseas Indian or foreign husband within twenty years of marriage and a case for maintenance and alimony is to be filed by her.

The release said the scheme would not be available to a woman having a criminal case against her, provided that a criminal charge of parental child abduction shall not be a bar if the custody of the child has not yet been adjudicated upon.

It said that assistance will be limited to $3,000 per case in developed countries and $2,000 per case in developing countries and will be released to the empanelled legal counsel of the applicant or Indian community association or women’s organisation or concerned non-government organisation to enable it to take steps to assist the woman in preparatory work for filing the case.

Not obsessed with PM’s post, Congress solid in UP: Rahul

Making it clear that he was not obsessed with becoming the prime minister, Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi recently said his mission was to change and develop Uttar Pradesh and the assembly polls would be “solid” for the party.

Addressing a press conference in Varanasi, Gandhi fielded questions on various subjects, and dismissed speculation that he was in the race for prime ministership.

“Rahul Gandhi’s obsession is not to be PM. Rahul Gandhi’s obsession is to work for the people,” he said.

“All the political leaders in India, all the top ones, have an obsession with prime ministership. This is not Rahul Gandhi’s obsession. I have another obsession.”

“My mission is to change UP, bring development to UP...You will see Rahul Gandhi in villages, in slums, in agricultural fields.”

Targeting the Bharatiya Janata Party over corruption, he said its leader L.K. Advani and some others had laughed at him for his idea of constitutional status to Lokpal but a constitutional status for Lokpal was “India’s idea”.

He said there is a “beauty” in the design of the Election Commission which has constitutional status. “Let us make a Lokpal bill along the same lines.”

He said Advani overlooked corruption in BJP-ruled states during his anti-corruption yatra.

“Whenever there has been a problem of corruption in the Congress party, any place, any time, we will take action. We have put ministers in jail.”

Gandhi said he was not concerned about winning or losing the assembly elections that have very high stakes for the Congress.

“Frankly, I am not concerned about what the results are,” he said, but denied he was conceding defeat.

“I am not conceding defeat, I am conceding victory. Elections results for the Congress will be solid.” years is a crime, nothing less than that,” he said, adding he was confident that Uttar Pradesh has the energy to transform itself.

“People are looking up to the Congress seriously. This is what people told us. The common man in Uttar Pradesh is telling me they have been fooled for the last 22 years.” term. It is not mine,” the Congress leader replied to queries if his Mission 2012 would be successful.

“I have learnt what it means to passionately believe in an idea. I have realised the power of the people of the state. I have realised that this state can stand on its feet very soon,” he said.

Gandhi said his mission was to strengthen the Congress in the state where it has been out of power for the last 22 years.

“Once the Congress party is strengthened, it will define whatever happens in the state,” he said, adding that the party would be strengthened if it wins 100 seats or a little less.

Gandhi said it was vital to hear to voice of the people. “I have no strength. I listen to people.”

He asserted that black flags, shoes or even bullets would not deter him. “Main kisi se nahin darta (I am not afraid of anything),” he said.

Gandhi said his work would not be complete till common people, farmers, labourers get their due respect whether the party gets 200 or 400 or two seats.

He said the Congress will not have truck with any party as he has come here to bring about a change.

2G verdict will have no impact on foreign investments: Moily

The Supreme Court judgment regarding cancellation of 2G licenses will have no impact on the inflow of foreign investments in the country, Corporate Affairs Minister Veerappa Moily said in Kolkata recently.

“Everybody should know that every country has its own regulations... If there is a case of any distribution of a national asset that is contrary to the rule of law of a country, then one should know the consequences. Any honest dealing will be rewarded and there will be problem if there is dishonesty,” Moily told reporters in Kolkata.

In a blow to the government, the Supreme Court recently quashed all 122 licenses for mobile phone services issued in 2008. In what also comes as a respite to some 45 million phone subscribers covered by the 122 licenses, Justices G.S. Singhvi and A.K. Ganguly ordered that the services will

Tele, Idea and MTS. But not all the licenses that are currently with them pertain to the tainted ones awarded in 2008.

When asked about the reported apprehensions of the foreign business houses regarding their investments not being safe, Moily said: “This is only a small segment of the business that is being done by foreign companies. There are large segments of business that is being done and that is unaffected. Any honest business done by the foreign business houses will be rewarded.”

Moily also dismissed reports that the telecom space can be anti-competitive after the cancellation of 122 licenses and said: “A competition law is there and the competition regulatory body will get into it to stop it.”

viSparsh: Helping the blind through touch

Mohammed Wasim is a young helpline operator at India’s National Association for the Blind (NAB) who could only perceive brightness and lights, but the lack of ability to discern shapes meant living in a shapeless world where every small obstacle could prove a barrier.

However, viSparsh, a belt-based sensor system (sparsh literally means touch) created by a young team of engineers, could herald a revolutionary change for 25-year-old Wasim, and millions of others who are blind.

Engineers Rolly Seth, Jatin Sharma and Tushar Chugh are Young India Fellows and are developing viSparsh under technical guidance of professor Rahul Mangharam of the University of Pennsylvania.

Whenever a user wearing viSparsh belt encounters an obstacle, the sensors find the distance and direction of the obstacle and provide vibratory feedback to the user.

For this, the team modified Microsoft’s Kinect, a motion sensing input device for the Xbox 360 video game console, and mounted it on the belt.

The vibrations are produced only in the direction of the obstacle and the intensity of the vibration increases as the obstacle gets closer so that the user can identify the direction of obstacle and judge if the obstacle is near or far.

detected,” said Wasim during the trials.

The first stage of development is already over, engineer Jatin Sharma said.

“We’re now at stage two. We have proved the usability; now our focus is on minimising the weight of the system and enhancing the battery backup,” said Sharma.

Speaking of their roadmap about viSparsh, Rolly Seth said, “The stage one is over and stage two is progressing rapidly. The next stage will be fabrication of the device.”

“The fabrication will be done in the US, after which the device will be ready for mass production,” Tushar Chugh revealed. If produced, viSparsh will be a new hope to many, who could walk free and unhindered.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), there are some 285 million visually impaired people around the world, of whom 39 million are completely blind.

Nagpur man aims to unite lonely elders

Advocating the need for companionship in the autumn of life, a Nagpur octogenarian has taken up the task of mooting live-in relationships for senior citizens who are leading a lonely life after outliving their spouses.

“The relationship might not be sexual only. They can live together as friends or define their own relationship,” said Arvind Godbole, 81, who is spearheading the initiative.

Godbole is working under the aegis of Jayeshthanche Live-In Relationship Sanyojak Mandal, formed by the Geeta Godbole Smriti Trust named after his daughter. He said he got inspired by a book written by Dada Dharmadhikari, an Indian freedom fighter and philosopher.

“Fondly known as Acharya Dada Dharmadhikari, he was one of the strongest adherents of Mahatma Gandhi’s principles. In his book ‘Purush aur Stree Sahajeevan’ Dada quoted Gandhiji as saying that a woman has many ‘roopas’. She can be a sister, a mother, an aunt, a friend and so on,” Godbole said.

“What we need to realise is that a woman can shower her affection in any form of a relationship. It does not have to be sexual. When we understand this, we will be free from the shackles of backward and narrowminded mindsets,” he added.

Godbole said that the book inspired him to bring together lonely senior citizens. The recent Supreme Court verdict making live-in relationships legal encouraged Godbole to take the initiative forward.

The mandal is now on the verge of laying down rules for membership and soon a drive would be formally launched to enrol interested elders.

“Once that is done, we will be open to registering members. A general member can be anyone over the age of 55 years -- single, married or widowed. We will then call them for a general meeting in March and discuss the format of the mandal and put it up for approval,” Godbole said.

The octogenarian said that the mandal currently had 15 core committee members and that the committee was a part of the Geeta Godbole Smriti Trust.

“As of now we are a sub-committee of the trust. Later, we might apply for a separate entity,” he said.

“Once the members agree upon a format, we will be organising several workshops and programmes for senior citizens,” he added.

Godbole, however, conceded that the initiative might be much more difficult to take forward.

“While it sounds like a wonderful idea at first instance, we also cannot ignore the fact that elders are set in their ways and their ideas. If we bring together a hundred people, chances are that only two of them would be compatible,” he said.

“But companionship is only one part of it. We would also look forward to sponsoring hostels where seniors could pay and stay in the comfort and company of others,” he added.

Godbole said that youngsters could also register as volunteers. “From all the general members, those who are left alone in society will be registered as beneficiaries. Our aim is that these beneficiaries be benefited from the mandal.”

The former Bank of India officer said that once the members were registered, the mandal would help them with a memorandum of understanding (MoU).

“The agreement of the MoU will be signed by both the beneficiaries who plan to stay together. We are also thinking about deciding an amount of compensation for women who might get cheated in this case. But this is just a preventive measure,” he said.

Godbole said that the core committee may arrive at a decision that the legal or biological heirs of the elders give a clearance to their proposed live-in relationship.

According to 61-year-old Nandini

Pimplapure, a committee member of the Mandal, “This is an age of nuclear families. Moreover, when your children grow up and start working or go abroad for work, parents are left alone. It becomes even more difficult to tackle loneliness if your spouse dies”.

Pimplapure, a retired school principal, says that a live-in relationship is often misunderstood.

“By taking this initiative, we are trying to remove the tabboo that surrounds a livein relationship. I never married due to my dedication to work. Today I stay with my 92-year-old mother and take care of her. This is a live-in relationship of sorts,” she said.

Pimplapure said that instead of misinterpreting the phrase people should look at it in a broader sense.

“At the evening of your life, you look for moral support and companionship. Our organisation will work towards this. Two women or two men or even a group of oldies can live-in and be good friends,” she said.

BCCI to clear issues with Sahara through dialogue

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) appeared to climb down and talked of reconciliation rather than confrontation with its estranged chief sponsor Sahara India, recently.

The board’s devil-may-care tone was missing when its president N.Srinivasan said the BCCI only has “perceptional differences” with Sahara India, the Team India’s sponsor for 11 years, and insisted that all the problems would be sorted out through dialogue.

A source in Sahara said that the corporate is studying the board’s conciliatory tone and weighing its options before reacting officially.

Srinivasan said he was open to dialogue for sorting out the issue with Sahara India, which recently announced it was ending its sponsorship deal with the BCCI for Team India and also pulled out of the Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise Pune Warriors.

“We only have perceptional differences and any dialogue is welcome. We have a long 11 years relationship with Sahara and I was surprised with their decision,” Srinivasan said.

When pointed out that Sahara chairman Subroto Roy took the decision after talking to him, Srinivasan said: “We had a long conversation recently and he expressed that he was hurt. But we never expected them to take this decision.”

Srinivasan was confident that the issue would be sorted out when the two parties sit down.

“When we sit down, we can sort out all the problems,” he said.

IPL chairman Rajeev Shukla also stated that “back channel negotiations” are on with Sahara to sort out the issue amicably.

“We have not yet officially heard anything from Sahara on the pull-out, but the board is ready to discuss the corporate’s grievances,” Shukla said. “After all, we have had a long and fruitful association.”

An optimistic Shukla refused to treat the issue as closed and said: “Pune Warriors are still part of the IPL and their genuine grievances would be addressed to their satisfaction.”

Shukla said the board would like to hear out Sahara first before taking any decision. In any case, decisions cannot be taken on the spur of the moment because of a festering problem.

“They have been our partner for 12 long years and we cannot take any decision in a haste. We are hopeful of finding a solution soon,” he said. Shukla, however, was clear that no IPL rule would be bent to accommodate any team, let alone Sahara.

“We cannot change any rule in the IPL to favour a team. It would have been unfair for other IPL franchises,” he said.

Sahara chairman Subrata Roy addressed a news conference in Mumbai after his corporate first announced it was withdrawing the sponsorship of Team India and then also that Pune Warriors were pulling out of the IPL.

The group’s grouse is that the BCCI did not show the respect a commercial partner should be shown by ignoring some of their genuine concerns with regard to the Pune Warriors.

Sahara signed a fresh sponsorship contract with the BCCI July 1, 2010, and it runs till Dec 31, 2013. According to the Rs.532-crore contract, Sahara will pay Rs.3.34 crore per Test match, one-day international and Twenty20 international under the new terms.

Sahara bought the IPL franchise Pune Warriors for Rs.1,702 crore, making it the most expensive franchise in the Twenty20 league. In all, the BCCI stands to lose around Rs.2,234 crore.

Sahara India snapped its multi-milliondollar sponsorship deal with the BCCI and also pulled out of Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise Pune Warriors, claiming they have been “denied natural justice yet again”. Sahara’s decision came hours before the IPL 2012 auction in Bangalore and there was no one from Pune Warriors team at the bidding.

Trouble was brewing between the two parties since 2008 and Sahara says the last straw was the form of BCCI’s denial to add Yuvraj Singh’s price to Pune Warriors auction purse after the southpaw was ruled out of the tournament with a lung tumour.

Sahara India chief Subroto Roy told the media in Mumbai that the board’s “onesided and arbitrary attitude” drove the corporate to end all their cricket activities in despair.

Defending Sahara’s decision to end its 11-year-old relationship with the BCCI, Roy said: “Our decision was not bad at all, we had enough of it. Any relationship does not break on one single issue. In a long relationship, it will always be over many issues and they have happened continuously.”

Roy said Sahara’s problems with the BCCI started in 2008 when their bid for one of the first eight IPL franchises was disqualified “owing to a small technicality”.

“There were so many genuine things we had but it (BCCI) did not give a heed to even a small thing like opening the bid. They did not open the bid (when Sahara had submitted for the first time). Rules were broken for other teams, but we were not given natural justice,” said Roy.

Roy also said that Sahara even requested the BCCI to settle all the issues through arbitration and had also proposed the name of an eminent lawyer as an arbitrator, but the board didn’t respond.

Roy also said Sahara India paid 25 percent extra when it bought the Pune franchise in 2010 for $370 million. When the two new franchises were up for sale, they were promised 94 matches but the 2011 edition had only 74 matches.

Roy said Sahara has asked the BCCI to look for a new buyer for Pune Warriors at the earliest.

The Sahara chief also said his group would continue sponsoring the cricket team for two-four months till a new sponsor was found.

IPL chairman and commissioner Rajeev Shukla, also a senior member of the BCCI, said it was extremely unfortunate that Sahara decided to snap its ties with the board on the day of the IPL auction.

“It’s unfortunate but we have not received any formal notice. But the show will go on. The marketing committee will take a decision. Dialogue will always continue,” Shukla told reporters during the break after the first phase of auction in Bangalore.

IPL chief executive Sundar Raman said Sahara wanted flexibility in the rules, which the league management could not accept.

“It would have been unfair on our part to accept their demands. It would be unfair to other franchises if we bend rules for one team,” he said.