New Delhi, Thursday 22 April 2010: The IPL saga continued to get murkier with reports Thursday claiming that Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel had helped Shashi Tharoor with the Kochi franchisee valuation.

As per a Newspaper report, Patel, through his personal secretary Champa Bhardwaj, had sent a mail to former minister of state for external affairs Shashi Tharoor with details about the projected valuations of new IPL franchisees.

It was sent by Patel’s secretary to Tharoor on March 19, two days before the opening of the bid, which was won by the Kochi consortium. Importantly, Patel’s daughter Poorna, who is also the IPL hospitality manager, had received the mail from IPL CEO Sundar Raman, she inturn forwarded it to her father’s secretary.

Patel had earlier on Tuesday denied any involvement in the lucrative league despite that fact that his daughter is employed by the T20 league as a hospitality manager.

“I have never ever been part of the bidding process, in round one or two. The allegations are completely baseless,” Patel had said.

Clarifying his stance on the latest controversy over his having ‘helped’ Tharoor, Patel said that he had simply sent the information requested by his ‘good friend’ Shashi Tharoor.

“Shashi and I have been good friends. Since he was putting together a team from Kochi, he asked me for some help. I spoke to Lalit and told him that Shashi wants some information. I donot have anything to do with it beyond that,” he said.