Bombay high court extends stay to tender-process for IPL telecast rights

The Bombay high court today extended the stay to inviting of tenders for telecast rights of Indian Premier League (IPL) by Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) till tomorrow.

Division bench of Justice PB Majmudar and Justice AA Sayed extended the stay after World Sports Group (WSG) approached it challenging a single bench order dismissing its plea against BCCI's decision to terminate its contract.

In June last year, the cricket board terminated WSG's contract for overseas telecast rights alleging that WSG had fraudulently entered into a contract with Multi Screen Media (MSM) Satellite.

"WSG was given telecast rights of all IPL matches by BCCI in January 2008. BCCI's contract with WSG and WSG's contract with MSM are independent of each other," WSG's counsel Aspi Chinoy argued today.

The senior counsel further argued that what rankled with BCCI was the fact that Rs425 crore was paid by MSM to WSG in accordance with the contract. "BCCI wanted MSM to pay that money to them directly," Chinoy said.

Opposing the appeal, senior counsel Rafiq Dada, appearing for BCCI, said, "The contract was terminated because of fraud and even the single bench order given by Justice SJ Vazifdar observes that prima facie there has been a fraud."

The division bench while adjourning the matter till tomorrow asked WSG to clarify whether the two contracts were independent of each other.