The seven veils

The Hindu in its editorial makes a good point:

The Franchise Agreement does have a confidentiality clause, which prohibits disclosure of the agreement, other than as might be required under the law, without the prior written agreement of both parties (the consortium and the IPL arm of the Board of Control for Cricket in India). But there is no justification for the existence of such a clause in the first place. The IPL draws heavily on public resources, not only for security purposes, but also in terms of tax exemptions and tariff concessions. There is an undeniable public interest in requiring consortiums bidding huge amounts for cricket franchises to disclose to the public their funding sources and shareholding particulars.

Precisely. The secrecy clause was written into the franchise agreement template for a reason — to prevent the mango man from knowing just who the various stakeholders really are in some at least of the franchises. While we keep banging on about whether or no Modi’s tweets were in violation of that clause, we forget to ask Modi why, if “transparency” is so key as he has been rabbiting on after his tweets got him in trouble, was there a need for a confidentiality clause in the first place.