Excise officer arm-twisting cricket body

Hyderabad: A district officer of the prohibition and excise department has demanded that the Hyderabad Cricket Association provide 50 corporate boxes and 250 privilege passes for Sunday’s IPL final.

The BCCI has held on to 10 VIP enclosures. The remaining 10 are shared by the state government and the Hyderabad Cricket Association.

Asked about the letter, a HCA source said, “The department has been arm-twisting of HCA for tickets for the final and warned us that the liquor licence will be held back if we did not comply. Pressure is also mounting from the police.”

The corporate boxes are authorised to serve liquor to guests and the HCA procures licence for the match day from the excise department. This is a weakness the department wants to exploit.

The source said that out of the 39,000 seats in the stadium, the association gets 10 per cent.

The letter of the excise department officer, dated May 5, a copy of which is available with this newspaper, stated, “Kind attention is invited to the subject cited and requested to provide (300) IPL cricket match tickets for the upcoming final match to be held on May 12th, so as to provide the same to the ‘Higher authorities’ of the department in the following order, Corporate box – 50 , other privilege passes 250 (sic).”

These, said Mr K. Pradeep Rao, Malkajgiri-Medchal district prohibition and excise officer, were meant for “higher authorities” of the department. The demand was made in a letter that carried the letterhead of the state government, the department stamp and his own signature.

Each VIP enclosure or corporate box comprises 20 seats, the excise department demand for 50 boxes amounts to 1,000 VIP seats. Together with the demand for 250 privilege passes, it all totals to 1,250 seats.

A source told Deccan Chronicle that the stadium houses 70 corporate boxes, of which 40 have been booked by Mumbai Indians owner and Reliance Group chairman Mukesh Ambani and 10 by Chennai Super Kings owner N. Srinivasan.