New Delhi, March 23: Indian Premier League commissioner Lalit Modi flew to South Africa on Monday night in search of a viable option to host IPL-II, but back home the picture is still fuzzy about the reasons behind the shift.

Last Tuesday, in a bold decision, Modi had dropped Delhi and Jaipur during the second revision of the IPL schedule on the grounds that the respective state governments had either completely refused to hold the Twenty20 matches until the polls were out of the way, or had asked for paramilitary forces to assist in security.

However, according to documents with this newspaper, it appears that Jaipur had actually given the green signal to the matches. They had only raised objections to a few dates in May and all of those dates were, incidentally, not clashing with match days.

"We hereby confirm that the state government agrees to the organisation of IPL matches in Jaipur or Jodhpur on the dates other than 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th and 16th of May 2009 on account of parliamentary poll on 7th May," says a letter to the Rajasthan Royals from the state’s principal secretary to the home department.

The letter says that the "matter of the need of paramilitary forces" will be taken up by the state with the government of India "separately". It goes on to add: "We assure that the state government shall make adequate security arrangements for the IPL matches in Rajasthan."

More intriguing is that the replacement venue — Ahmedabad — was itself not ready the host the matches, if the Gujarat state police chief’s letter dated March 17 is anything to go by.

"We are not in a position to demarcate police force for security purpose for IPL matches between 15th April and 3rd May. In this view, you may kindly explore the feasibility of shifting the match scheduled for April 22 to any date, either before 10th April or 3rd May. Remaining matches to be played on April 11 and 13 as well as on May 6 and 12 (in Gujarat) are alright with us," S.S. Khandawala, said in a letter to Gujarat Cricket Association president Narhari Amin. Matches for Jaipur had been initially scheduled for April 14, 18 and 20, and May 5.

Also worth noting is the fact that two states — Chattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh — had offered to host matches in Raipur, Indore and Gwalior. No strings attached.

While they may not have been very lucrative venues in terms of revenue-making, they do give a new twist to the eventual decision of moving IPL out of India — by all parties that pushed towards that end.