Calcutta HC directive to Sahara India

Principal Correspondent

KOLKATA: The Calcutta High Court has passed an order asking Sahara India Limited to deposit the due sponsorship money to the Indian Hockey Federation in a suspense account.

Justice Indira Banerjee passed an order in this respect on Monday, giving a new turn to the legal tussle between the old committee of Indian Hockey Federation (IHF) chaired by K.P.S. Gill and Leisure Sports Management (LSM), the marketing group of Sahara India Limited.

The Calcutta High Court asked Sahara to deposit the due sponsorship amount which is to a tune of Rs 2.11 crore — in suspense account till further orders of the court.

The order was based on a prayer made by IHF old committee, which alleged the LSM had obtained an interim order from this court by suppressing some facts, in February last year.
Green signal

The Indian hockey team can now sport its original sponsors’ logo. Through this interim order, the Calcutta High Court stayed the operation of a notice issued by the old committee of the IHF that the Indian hockey players would play international matches without wearing the Sahara logo on their jerseys.

The prosecution of case stated that there existed an eight-year sponsorship agreement between Sahara India Ltd., LSM and IHF committee led by Gill, which was signed on July 15, 2003.

According to that agreement, Sahara was supposed to sponsor Indian hockey team in international matches and the sponsorship amount was to be distributed through LSM.

The payments were to be made in four quarters in April, July, October and January every year.

Till the third quarter of 2007-2008 financial year everything was smooth. But since January 2008 the Federation did not receive any amount from Sahara. So, we decided to remove the sponsors’ logos from the Indian jerseys, the lawyers appearing for the Gill-led committee claimed.

The old committee also informed the court that the Sahara had taken the advantage of an incident, in which the Indian Olympic Committee had superseded the old committee and constituted an ad hoc committee of the federation with the intention for holding an election and form a new committee.

The lawyer appearing for the ad hoc committee claimed since it has the authority to run the federation the company (Sahara) should hand over the money to it.
Courtesy: The HIndu