The Mumbai Police has issued two bills of Rs 3.60 crore and Rs 6.66 crore for the Mumbai Cricket Association to clear. The bill issued is for the international matches which have been held in Mumbai in the past. The two bills had been issued on 9th of November and 18th of November respectively and the Mumbai police expect the due to be cleared within 20 days of the notice period. Failing to do so, the Mumbai cricket association’s properties are to be attached and seized.
Mumbai hosted 3 warm-up matches and 5 T20 games of the T20 world cup last year the police bandobast bill of which summed up to Rs 3.60. The bill of Rs 6.66 was charged for the ICC Women’s World Cup held in 2013 where Mumbai hosted 13 international games and 7 warm-up matches.
The security charges according to the MCA are a bit too high and they have planned to appeal against the same.
A MCA official quoted “How can you charge Rs 6.66 cr for women’s games when we all know the stadium was deserted and hardly a few people turned up for those matches held in 2013? The entry was free in many venues. The Police have charged us for warm-up games as well. They need to understand that warm-up games are different from international games. We have no option but to appeal now.”
The notice sent by the Mumbai police reads,“You are hereby issued a notice for sum of Rs 3.60 cr due from you on account of penalty imposed/Arrears of/Commercial Tax/ Sales Tax/Workman’s Compensation/Pension & Gratuity/ Consumer Dues, which are to be recovered as arrears of Land Revenue u/s 267 of the The Maharashtra Land Revenue Code 1966 and in case of non-receipt of dues within 20 days from the date of service of this notice you are liable for penalty of Rs.2 of notice fee. Also, Compulsory proceeding will be taken against you according to the law for the recovery of the dues by. 1. Attachment and sale of moveable property Or, 2. Attachment and Sale of such portion of land which will satisfy the demand Or, 3. Attachment and Sale of right title and interest in other immovable property.”
Home Department Additional Chief secretary KP Bakshi has also sent a letter to the MCA fixing uniform slab rate for providing police security for cricket matches. For any IPL/T20 game, it would require 60 lakhs to secure Mumbai whereas for Tests it would be 50 lakhs.
However, the bandobast charges for any IPL and Test match to be played in Nagpur/Pune/Navi Mumbai will have to pay 40 and 35 lakhs respectively.
According to the MCA, the local authorities has not provided them with any details regarding the T20 world cup but full details have been provided as far as the ICC Women’s World Cup is concerned.
“We wanted to give five lakh for Test match per day whereas for T20 and ODI we had quoted 25 lakh rupees but instead local authorities wanted us to pay as per the uniform slab. How can security for Mumbai and other cities of Maharashtra be different?” said another official.