Himachal Pradesh Congress today expressed its shock and dismay over the statement of Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association (HPCA) president Anurag Thakur, justifying the formation of a company for running a hotel at Dharamsala on the pretext of promoting the game in the state.
"It is a brazen act to justify the misdeeds of HPCA," senior HPCC leaders Ram Lal Thakur, Harbhajan Singh Bhajji, Chander Kumar and Sudhir Sharma said in a statement here.
"If the HPCA had designs to run commercial activities by forming a company, it should have purchased the land but instead of adopting the right path it formed two bodies of which one was a society and other a company and the real intentions of HPCA stand exposed," they added.
The Congress party was aware of "malafide intentions" of HPCA to commercialise cricket and run the business of selling services in the name of cricket in the state and after registration of FIR, more facts would come out, they said.
The Congress leaders said that the land given on lease to the HPCA was for developing grounds for playing cricket and not for any commercial activities but the HPCA cheated the sportspersons and harmed the interests of the state by allegedly turning cricket into a business.
They said that the HPCA president had always been befooling the people of the state by using the influence of his father, then chief minister during the previous BJP regime and it was only because of ths undue political patronage that HPCA got 90 kanals of common village land in Dharamsala for constructing a five star hotel.
