Sahara to take hockey’s ad-hoc body to court over logo
PTI
Tuesday, February 3, 2009 19:34
New Delhi: Indian hockey has been rocked by yet another controversy with team’s main sponsor Sahara India Pariwar threatening to take the game’s administrators, Indian Olympic Association-appointed ad-hoc committee, to court for not using the company logo on the national team’s outfit.
Sahara’s sports management company, Kolkata-based Leisure Sports Management Private Limited has served a legal notice to the ad-hoc body for breach of contract which calls for the use of logo in the national team’s jersey for every international outing.
“Yes, we have sent them (the ad-hoc committee) a legal notice for playing without Sahara logo in the on-going Punjab Gold Cup in Chandigarh and if they don’t respond to our notice, we will take them to the court,” chairman and managing sirector of LSM, SS Dasgupta said.
On behalf of Sahara, LSM had entered into an eight-year contract of approximately Rs 20 crore with the erstwhile Indian Hockey Federation in 2004 to use the company logo in the senior as well as junior national team’s outfit during all international tournaments.
After KPS Gill-backed IHF’s dissolution in April last year, the contract still existed and the national team used Sahara logo in four international tournaments, the most recent
among them was senior team’s four-Test Argentina tour last month.
Dasgupta, however, expressed astonishment over discrepancy in using the sponsor’s logo and said as far as payments were concerned, the company cannot pay such huge money to anybody without proper documents as a legal battle is on between Gill-led IHF and the ad-hoc body.