The Hindu : National : ESPN and Zee do not meet tender terms: court

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Saturday, Sep 18, 2004

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ESPN and Zee do not meet tender terms: court

MUMBAI, SEPT. 17. If the tender norms were strictly adhered to, then both Zee Telefims Limited and ESPN-Star Sports would not qualify for the telecast rights granted by the Board of Control for Cricket in India, the Bombay High Court observed today.

Hearing ESPN-Star Sport's petition challenging the award of telecast rights to Zee Telefims, the court said: "If we strictly stick to your line of argument then both the parties [Zee telefims and ESPN Star Sports] would be ineligible," the court told Zee Telefilm's counsel, Harish Salve.

The observation came when Mr. Salve was arguing ESPN-Star Sports' contention that Zee Telefilms did not have the required experience and it did not own ``production facilities'' required for the live telecast of matches.

He said that ESPN-Star Sports just hired the production units. Going by the records submitted, in the last two years, ESPN-Star Sports had produced only one series exclusively and that also did not fulfil the required "minimum two years of experience" criteria.

Mr. Salve told the court that like ESPN-Star Sports, even Zee Telefilms would hire "specialist" production professionals and equipment, thereby submitting that the criterion deeming Zee Telefilms as ineligible was incorrect.

`Prasar Bharti too'

After the court's observation, Mr. Salve said that in case of strict adherence to tender conditions, none of the parties including Prasar Bharti, would be eligible to get the telecast rights, as all of them were merely licencees. All of them hired production units.

Mr. Salve told the court that Zee Telefims was not debating on the experience criterion. No bidder was qualified in its individual capacity to get the telecast rights, he said.

"The BCCI entertained our bid and it was the lowest," he said while stressing that Zee Telefilm's bid was deemed eligible by the board.

Earlier, ESPN-Star Sports' counsel, Iqbal Chaggla, contended SAB TV's argument about being a foreign entity that was raised yesterday in an intervention application by telling the court that even Zee telefims had its registered offices in the United States and the United Kingdom.

The BCCI asked time for arguments and the court told the Board to put forward its submissions on Monday when the Board's counsel, K.K. Venugopal, is expected to appear. — PTI

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