Details about Sunanda Pushkar: The mysterious owner of IPL Kochi team

Sunanda Pushkar, the mysterious owner of the new IPL Kochi team, is believed to be the third would be wife of Shashi Tharoor. Shashi Tharoor had been married twice before. His first marriage was with Tilottama Mukherji, an academician based in Kolkata. Tharoor used to know her back in her school days in Kolkata. His second marriage was with Christa Giles, a Canadian civil servant. Christa Giles currently works with the United States on disarmament issues. Sunanda Pushkar has her own spa business in Dubai.

It was IPL Chairman, Lalit Modi, who broke out this confidential piece of information by giving out the names of the stake holders in the new IPL franchise. In a Tweeter message, Lalit Modi said,

“I was told not to get into who owns Rendezvous, specially Sunanda Pushkar. Why?”

The new IPL Kochi team has seven owners, they are-

Rendezvous Sports World (25% free)

Rendezvous Sports World (1% purchased)

Anchor (27%)

Parinee (26%)

Film Waves (12%)

Anand Shyam (8%)

Vivek Venugopal (1%).

The Rendezvous Sports World is a consortium which consists of eight members- Kisan, Shailender and Pushpa Gaikwad, Sunanda Pushkar, Puja Gulathi, Jayant Kotalwar, Vishnu Prasad, Sundip Agarwal. Out of the 25% free equity, Sunanda Pushkar holds 18%.

The signing of the franchise agreement took place on April 10, 2010. News reports say that, a union minister called up an IPL official and told not to look for details about Sunanda Pushkar. Later, it was revealed that Sunanda Pushkar is close with Shashi Tharoor and the two were seen together in New Delhi’s social circles for quite some times.

Interestingly, the idea of creating a “five member consortium” to have an IPL team for Kochi was spearheaded by Tharoor himself. Though he mentioned that he has no financial interest, it is now clear that Tharoor had other intentions. The sale price of Kochi IPL team was Rs.1,530 crores and 18% of that amount is a big amount and if it comes out that Tharoor is some how related in the matter will pose a big threat for his political career.

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