In his statement, Shashi Tharoor charged, "Various attempts were made by Mr Modi and others to pressure the consortium members to abandon their bid in favour of another city in a different state. Mr Modi raised assorted objections to the bid documents but finally had no choice but to approve them."
While Tharoor stopped short of naming the city, those in the know say his reference was to Ahmedabad, sought by Adani group, which was almost certain to get an IPL team at the auction on March 21. It lost out to Pune and Kochi.