BCCI still concerned over new IPL dates

BCCI officials submitted a revised Indian Premier League Season 2 schedule to the Home Ministry in a meeting concluded on Monday. After much hype and drama over security issues, the BCCI prepared new dates after the first revised set of dates were rejected by the government saying it was not feasible during the election period.

Though BCCI says it still has some reservations regarding the IPL dates.

"Home Ministry has concerns over new dates and we also have reservations," said BCCI officials.

Earlier, the ministry was officially tight-lipped about the entire issue, it was surprised by replies from various states expressing their inability to host the mega event even with the revised schedule, the sources said.

Before submitting the revised schedule, IPL Commissioner Lalit Modi had said at a media briefing that before chalking out the new fixtures, all states concerned had been taken into confidence.

Union Home Secretary Madhukar Gupta along with Special Secretary (Internal Security) Raman Shrivastava held a meeting with IPL organisers today during which it was to likely to be indicated to them that they should be holding proper consultations with the states where they wanted to hold the cricket tournament, the sources said.

West Bengal may be taken off from the schedule as the state was demanding deployment of 30 companies (over 3,000 personnel) of central para-military forces, they said.

The Ministry on March 13 had rejected the revised schedule of the IPL organisers and had said it "may not be feasible to play matches as per the submitted schedule".

"It is not possible to exempt any state from its promise to release state police personnel for election duties because these have been taken into account in arriving at the overall availability of security personnel," the Home Ministry had said while rejecting the revised schedule.