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| Sunanda denies acting as 'proxy' for Tharoor | | |
KUNAL SHRIVATSA
EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, Apr 14: In the much hyped Indian Premier League (IPL) T-20 Cricket Tournament, Jammu city is also hogging the limelight albeit not related to the game but for some other unwanted reasons.
With Sunanda Pushkar in the thick of the Indian Premier League (IPL) Kochi team controversy, the winter capital of the state has doing the rounds in political as well as print and electronic media circles since the parents of Dubai based socialite reside in posh Channi Himmat locality's Sector number 5 here.
A day after her name figured in media reports that she holds a 25 percent 'free' stake in the Kochi IPL franchise, Sunanda Pushkar today denied the allegations by issuing a strong statement.
Lambasting the media for focusing on her personal life, instead of looking at her professional achievements, Sunanda refuted acting as a proxy for Shashi Tharoor.
Shashi Tharoor is reportedly planning to marry Sunanda in the month of June after divorcing his second wife, who is a Canadian.
It is alleged that Tharoor misused his official position to secure a stake in the multi-crore rupee IPL deal for his friend Sunanda Pushkar
In the statement, Sunanda said that the media had ignored her professional background and international business experience and focused on her personal life "as if a woman cannot be capable of professional or financial success."
She maintained in the statement that her own business interests and assets were substantial, and efforts to besmirch Tharoor by presenting her as a proxy for him were personally insulting for her 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," she added in the statement.
Pushkar said she was approached last year by Rendezvous Sports World, which heads the consortium that owns the IPL Kochi team, to associate with them as a consultant in their various sporting activities and particularly in their potential bid to acquire the franchise of an IPL team. She said that she was approached in view of her extensive international experience as a business executive, marketing manager and entrepreneur. She added that she would be assisting Rendezvous particularly in the areas of fund-raising, networking, event management and brand building.
Sunanda said that because this was a start-up effort, she was told that in lieu of a salary she would be given minor equity in Rendezvous in return for her efforts. She added that she accepted no salary or expenses and that her equity remained only on paper for the foreseeable future.
Sunanda also said that her personal life was nobody else's business and if she had a marriage to announce, she would do it herself, rather than leave it to strangers.
With controversy surrounding Sunanda Pushkar's stake in the Kochi IPL team refusing to die down, her father also interacted with media today and said Sunanda has faced many ordeals in her life and pleaded that she be left on her own.
"Sunanda has gone through many sufferings and faced a troubled life. She should be left alone", said her father Lt Col (Retd) Pushkar Nath Dass.
Sunanda Pushkar, a Kashmiri Pandit, was born in village Daspora near Bomai, 8 kilometers from apple town of Sopore in Kashmir valley, in the family of an army officer.
Her father Pushkar Nath Dass retired from army in 1983 as a Lt Colonel and thereafter the family shifted to Srinagar where Sunanda graduated from Government College for Women.
After militancy broke out in valley in early 90s and in the subsequent melee when militants torched their ancestral home in Bomai, the family was forced to migrate to Jammu.
According to some family friends here, Pushkar first got married to one Sanjay Raina, a Kashmiri Pandit. But after few years of marriage they parted ways and had divorce.
Following the divorce, Pushkar went to Dubai, where she married again. Her second husband Sujit Menon was a dealer in fire-fighting equipments.
"The couple shifted to Dubai, where Sujit organised a Malayalam superstar's show that turned out to be a financial disaster for him. Sujit returned home to Kerala alone and later met a tragic end in an accident in Delhi. Sunanda moved to Toronto afterwards for some time," they added.
Sunanda, 48, has a 13-year old son from her first husband and runs a spa in Dubai, where she also held an executive's post with an infrastructure company owned by the Emirates government. Earlier, she had worked with an advertising firm called Buzell and a travel agency in Dubai, and even for an IT company in Toronto, in between trying her hand at event management, sources said.
Pushkar has two brothers, one of whom (Ashish Das) works as an engineer while the other one Rajesh Pushkar is a Colonel in the Army.
Pushkar, who reportedly is a stakeholder in IPL Kochi team, is surrounded with controversies after IPL Commissioner Lalit Modi raised questions about her 25 percent 'free' stake in the Kochi franchise which is approximately worth whopping Rs 70 crore.
Modi had alleged that she was a major stakeholder in cricket team IPL Kochi and that there was pressure on him from Union Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor not to reveal the owners of the Rendezvous Sports World.
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