The tension between the government and the Opposition on holding the IPL tournament along side the general elections today erupted into a war of words between Home Minister P Chidambaram and the BJP leaders.
Chidambaram even invoked the memory of 2002 Gujarat riots to counter Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s criticism that “the shifting of the IPL out of India was a national shame.”
He also joined issues with BJP General Secretary Arun Jaitley, who had alleged that while all NDA-ruled states had offered to host the IPL, it were the Congress-ruled states which had dithered on it.
The home minister said: “Jaitley has a penchant for exaggeration and this time he went overboard.” He rated the IPL as a “shrewd combination of cricket and business’’ and asked the Opposition and the BCCI not “to bring politics into it”.