After Royals, Kings XI termination stayed

PTI

New Delhi, 08 December 2010: Bombay High Court on Wednesday granted injunction to BCCI discarded IPL franchisee- Kings XI Punjab with regard to the termination notice issued against them by the BCCI but the franchisee will have to fulfill certain financial conditions till the arbitration process is complete.

Ordering an interim stay on termination of Punjab franchisee, Bombay HC has ordered Punjab consortium members to maintain same shareholding pattern and pay guarantees of $18 million of players’ contracts to BCCI by December 31.

HC has also asked Kings XI Punjab to pay $3.5 million as franchisee fee to BCCI and have ordered to give the full control of the franchisee to Mohit Burman.

Earlier, Kings XI were hoping for an interim relief along the lines of Rajasthan Royals, who had managed to obtain a stay order against the scrapping of their team from the Indian Premier League by the Board.

Both the franchisees are hoping to be a part of the next IPL season after the Kochi team got the green signal from BCCI to participate in the fourth edition of the cash-rich event.

 
Calling the termination of their franchise contract as a “deliberate and calculated” move, Kings XI contended in the petition that BCCI had taken this decision because they wanted to make large profits by seeking new bids as the value of franchisees had gone up considerably.

Kings XI, jointly owned by Zinta, Wadia, Mohit Burman and Karan Paul, had bagged the Mohali bid in early 2008 for Rs 76 crore. However, two recent franchisees – Kochi and Sahara Pune – had fetched BCCI Rs 330 crore and Rs 370 crore.

BCCI had terminated the franchise agreement of Kings XI on the ground that it was signed by different persons and not by the members of the consortium that had bid.

Kings XI has sought a stay on the BCCI’s decision to terminate the contract. It has also prayed for revocation of the termination of the contract by BCCI saying it would hurt the interests of young players of Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir.

Kings XI contended that Zinta had submitted the bid document after seeking authorisation of other members of the consortium along with Rs 20 crore performance deposit. She had contributed 50 per cent of this amount, the petition said.

The petition refers to a letter written by Zinta on behalf of the consortium to the then Chairperson of IPL Lalit Modi on February 9, 2009 which said a company would be formed in which the original bidders (consortium members) would hold stakes.

The letter ended saying ‘Hope this is OK’ and Lalit Modi endorsed his signature writing ‘Go ahead’.