New Delhi: The Sahara Group accused the BCCI of “betrayal of trust” on Wednesday while rejecting claims of the Board that the IPL team was to be blamed for the controversy surrounding the franchise fee, leading to Pune Warriors pulling out of the Twenty20 tournament.
A day after Sahara Group pulled out its team Pune Warriors from IPL, citing BCCI’s decision to encash its bank guarantee following a prolonged financial dispute as the reason, the Board came out with its version saying that it has always wanted the impasse to end.
The BCCI said that Sahara had not responded to the BCCI’s communication sent to the company after the deadline to pay the franchise fee due was over and it had no other option but to encash the bank guarantee.
Reacting to the BCCI’s claims, Sahara Group said the fact that the Board would encash the bank guarantee a day after Pune Warriors played their last match in the ongoing IPL was a case of “betrayal of trust”.
“…Mr Rajiv Shukla, Chairman IPL had a discussion with our Chairman, Shri Subrata Roy Sahara, in which our Chairman had suggested that we are ready to make the final instalment payment and is ready to exit amicably if IPL doesn’t reduce the franchisee fee. But Shri Shukla had assured our Chairman to hold on and said that he will resolve the issue and till then the bank guarantee will not be touched,” Sahara Group said in a statement.
“Moreover, the IPL Chairman told Shri Roy not to take any action and that he will revert on future course to be taken. And we believed Shri Shukla at that time. The bank guarantee lapsed on 2nd May and nobody from BCCI went for encashment of bank guarantee which gave us more reasons to believe in the assurance made by Shri Shukla.
“The IPL Governing Council met with representatives of the franchisee on 21 February 2013 and received assurances that the franchisee would settle all obligations as they fell due. Once the 3 April 2013 due date had passed, the Governing Council had two letters sent to Sahara Adventure Sports Limited – one on 12 April 2013 and the second on 24 April 2013 – requesting settlement of the overdue amount.
“No payment was made and no response was received to the second letter and so, in order to protect its interests, the BCCI was forced to encash the guarantee,” BCCI Secretary Sanjay Jagdale said in a statement.
On the BCCI’s assertion that it cannot enter into a private negotiation on the quantum of franchise fee, Sahara wondered whether the talks its chairman had with Board President as well as the IPL Chairman were not private negotiations.
“On the question of ‘private negotiations’, last year on February, when we have decided to pull out of IPL and Indian Cricket team sponsorship, the President of BCCI, IPL Chairman and other senior functionaries of BCCI met us, negotiated with us and a joint statement was worked out (in which they also had assured the resolution of the franchisee fee issue) – was that not a private negotiation? Should the words given by the Chairman of IPL be treated as private negotiation?
“Sahara has always acted in accordance with Franchise Agreement and in fact, despite BCCI unilaterally reducing the number of matches, Sahara continued to participate in the league and make payments as per the Franchise Agreement.” (PTI)