Date:21/01/2003 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2003/01/21/stories/2003012102751200.htm

National

Delhi HC reserves orders on cricket row

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI JAN. 20. The Delhi High Court today reserved orders for January 22 on a petition seeking direction to the Union Government not to release foreign exchange for and give income tax deduction to the Indian companies sponsoring the Cricket World Cup beginning from February 8 if the International Cricket Council (ICC) debars the Indian team from participating in the month-long quadrennial event.

While reserving the orders, a Division Bench comprising Justice Devinder Gupta and Justice B.D. Ahmed said the contending parties were at liberty to make efforts to resolve the dispute through negotiations.

Earlier, the parties on both sides of the divide argued for and against entertaining the public interest litigation filed by six eminent citizens of the country — former Union Minister, N.K.P. Salve, former West Bengal Chief Minister, Siddharth Shankar Ray, former Indian cricket captain, Kapil Dev, former Indian medium pace bowler, Madan Lal, Ram Babu Gupta, a former Test umpire and Shyam Kumar Bansal, a former ICC umpire.

Suggesting that the Union Government should take initiatives to resolve the issue by bringing all the parties to the negotiating table, the former Union Minister for Law and counsel for the petitioners, submitted that it was a valid cause for judicial intervention in public interest.

Supporting Mr. Jaitley's contention, Kapil Sibal and former Solicitor-General, Harish Salve, appearing for the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), submitted that the court should direct the Government to take action in the interest of the nation if the Indian team was disallowed to play in the World Cup. Opposing the petition, the former Union Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, counsel for the soft drink multinational giant, Pepsi Foods Limited, and Anil Diwan, counsel for the ICC, submitted that there was no public interest involved in the petition.

They argued that the dispute, if any, was between the parties who had entered into the commercial contracts, and any dispute regarding the contractual obligations was supposed be decided through arbitration or other legal means not through a public interest litigation.

The petitioners said that the dispute had arisen out of the implementation of the Participating Nations Agreement and the Player Terms which debar members of a participating team from entering into individual commercial contracts with the competing sponsor companies of the World Cup.

In fact, adhering to the Player Terms would mean Indian players withdrawing from the individual commercial contracts which they are not ready to do, as it would hurt their earnings, the petitioners said.