Demand for IPL final tickets puts Telengana excise official in soup

Hyderabad: A senior official of the Telangana Excise and Prohibition Department has landed in trouble for seeking 300 complimentary tickets for the IPL final between Chennai Super Kings (CSK) and Mumbai Indians (MI) with higher-ups taking a ‘serious view’ and issuing a memo. The final comes off Sunday night.

K Pradeep Rao, district prohibition and excise officer of Medchal-Malkajgiri District, wrote a letter to the chief executive officer of the Hyderabad Cricket Association seeking 50 complimentary corporate box and 250 other privilege passes to be given to ‘higher authorities’.

“Kind attention is invited to the subject cited and requesting to provide (300) IPL cricket match tickets for the upcoming final match to be held on 12-05-2019 so as to provide the same to the higher authorities of the department,” Rao wrote in an official letter with stamp and seal, May 9.

Justifying the letter, the official said many people sought tickets during cricket matches and the BCCI normally asked them to send the request.

When contacted, Special Chief Secretary (Commercial Taxes and Excise) Somesh Kumar said the government took a serious view of the letter written by his department official.

“This official wrote a letter (for tickets). We have taken basically a serious view. As a first step we are issuing a charge memo (to him) and further action will follow,” Kumar told this agency, Sunday.

Recently, the central deputation tenure of senior bureaucrat Gopal Krishan Gupta, who had sought complimentary passes for IPL matches from Delhi District and Cricket Association, was curtailed and he was sent back to his cadre Railway Ministry.

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