How Modi lost friends and made enemies

Jaipur: Indian Premier League Commissioner Lalit Modi is finding himself in a difficult situation with the Government, the Board of Control for Cricket in India and his opponents in his home state of Rajasthan sharpening their knives.

Three years back before he set up the country's most moneyed cricketing league, very few people outside Rajasthan knew Modi. He started in 2005 by getting himself nominated from the Nagaur Cricket Association in Rajasthan allegedly impersonating someone called Lalit Kumar.

Then with help from his friend and former Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje, who brought in an ordinance with more voting powers to the district cricket associations, Modi he became president of the Rajasthan Cricket Association. But a case of fraud is still pending against him in the court.

"I was the secretary then and I recognised one Lalit Kumar as the President of Naguar DCA. That Lalit Kumar appeared before me at that time and after that several things happened," says former RCA president Kishore Rungta.

Impersonation is just one of the charges against Modi. During the Raje government, Modi was known as the super chief minister and was accused among other things of swinging land deals for real estate companies.

He and his wife Minal are also facing an enquiry into purchase of heritage havelis in Amer during that time.

"All these are old things that I have already said. It is a case of pot calling the kettle black. This is the old face of Lalit Modi and I have been saying this for the last five-seven years. He doesn't look at what he's up to and he's been trying to malign others," says RCA Secretary Sanjay Dixit.

But things got difficult for Modi in Rajasthan after Ashok Gehlot became chief minister. Modi lost the RCA elections in 2009, but by then he was already a big player on the global scene.

Now with the IPL controversy erupting his rivals are ready to settle old scores with him.

As Modi perhaps feels the noose tighten on him, the man who came out tougher each time the going got tough might just be realising that this time its going to be tougher than ever for him.