day after civil aviation minister Praful Patel claimed that he has nothing to do with the Indian Premier League, it has emerged that his personal secretary had last month sent a mail to Shashi Tharoor, the erstwhile junior minister for external affairs, with a Microsoft Excel document containing projections of new franchisee valuations in IPL.

Emails that ET reporters have seen show that Champa Bharatwaj, personal secretary to Mr Patel, forwarded a mail from her official ID to Shashi Tharoor’s personal ID, hours after IPL CEO Sundar Raman sent the same document to the aviation minister’s daughter and IPL hospitality manager Poorna Patel.

In the wake of a raging controversy surrounding cricket, politics, and charges of betting and money laundering, Mr Patel said on Tuesday that he had nothing to do with IPL, even though his daughter, 24-year-old Poorna Patel, works with the cricket league as a “junior employee”. “I have never been part of the IPL bidding process at all—whether it was round one or round two. This is a completely baseless allegation,” Patel told ET on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, Mr Patel said his secretary was only forwarding information requested by Mr Tharoor. “Shashi and I have been friends and he did ask me whether I could help him with some information in the capacity of a friend, since he was putting together a team from Kochi. I spoke to Lalit and told him that Shashi wanted some information. Beyond that I don’t know what information has been passed. If I was a bidder, why would I help out a competitor with information?” he said.