The protests over the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act notwithstanding, the player auction for the Indian Premier League will go ahead in Kolkata as scheduled on Thursday.
PTI reported that Delhi Capitals’ management team that will be representing the franchise at the auction will be reaching Kolkata on Tuesday to start their final preparation.
“As of Monday evening, IPL auctions are on. Franchises will start arriving by [Tuesday] evening and Wednesday morning,” a senior BCCI official told PTI.
As many as 332 cricketers will go under the hammer at the IPL auction in Kolkata on December 19 with Australia’s Glenn Maxwell and South African Dale Steyn among those opting for the highest base price of Rs 2 crore.
This year’s auction is a minor one with only 73 slots are there to be filled in the eight franchises and only 29 of them can be foreign players.
The contentious law allows citizenship to persecuted Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan, provided they have resided in India for six years. The cut-off date is December 31, 2014. It explicitly excludes Muslims from these countries.
Follow our live blog on the political fallout of the Citizenship Act across India.