A day after civil aviation minister claimed he was not associated with the IPL in any way, it has emerged that his office was in touch with the former junior foreign minister Shashi Tharoor over the projected valuation of the new franchisee.

According to a report in Economic Times today, Patel’s personal secretary had last month sent a mail to Tharoor with a Microsoft Excel document containing projections of new franchisee valuations in IPL.

The emails, that ET claims it has 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.

Patel has called a press conference in the capital today in which he is likely to react to the report. Earlier, Patel had vehemently denied his role in the IPL corruption saga that has been unfolding ever since the IPL commissioner Lalit Modi disclosed the names of the Kochi franchisee owners. “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 Reacting to the report on the said mail, Patel on Wednesday told ET that his secretary was only forwarding information requested by 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 told ET.

According to the ET report Patel’s secretary sent a mail to Tharoor at 10:06 pm on March 19, two days before the bids were opened and Tharoor-supported Kochi consortium sprang a surprise by making the second-highest bid. About two hours earlier that day, this document was first sent by IPL CEO Sundar Raman to Poorna Patel, the aviation minister’s 24-year-old daughter who works with the league as hospitality manager. Raman sent copies of the mail to herl and one Peter Griffiths of IMG.