SC dismisses Zee's petition on telecast rights

Sameer Rana - Televisionpoint.com
The Supreme Court, SC on Friday gave an violent jerk to Zee Telefilms, dismissing a last ditch appeal by Zee challenging a May 2 Madras high court order. The television rights wrangle between Zee Telefilms Limited and the Board of Control for Cricket in India, BCCI, sputtered to an anticlimactic end with the Supreme Court rule.

Jagmohan Dalmiya, former president of the BCCI, was the happiest man on earth today, from Malaysia he said "The good news proves that the judiciary is still active, alive and vibrant in this country. We are thankful to them. I repeat it and say again Truth Prevails in Our Country."

An Angry Dalmiya said: "They (Zee) have been talking about arbitrary and unfair action on my part. What do they have to say now? Zee has been playing with my credibility and reputation for a long time but I was always hopeful that in the end truth will prevail. This is a great boost for us and proves that there was nothing wrong with the tender process, as Zee has been alleging. The BCCI's functioning has been above board in this matter, and hats off to the judiciary for recognizing it. The cancellation was finally not 'improper'."

"You can move a civil court for seeking damages," the bench said, which refused to interfere with the order of the Madras high court upholding the board's decision to cancel the tender process for awarding telecast rights for international matches till 2008. Chief Justice R.C. Lahoti, Justice N. Santosh Hedge and Justice G.P. Mathur dismissed the petition.

BCCI's Ushanath Banerjee told Televisionpoint.com "It is curtains for Zee, and all their ambitions, the histrionics of BCCI's opponents in this bidding war have been brought to an end, and hopefully we'll hear no more of the matter." Banerjee further said that, "Basically what the Supreme Court has done is to uphold the high court division bench order, which stated that the bidding process and whatever transpired after it, was a totally transparent action on the part of Jagmohan Dalmiya, the TV rights committee and other board functionaries."

We made several repeated attempts to contact Zee on this matter, but the spokesperson for Zee telefilms offered no comments and said that the future course of action would have to be discussed internally within the company.

The seeds of the discord were sown when the BCCI decided to cancel the entire tender process after ESPN Star Sports approached the Bombay high court challenging the board's decision to award the four year contract to Zee, who were till that point the highest bidders. Zee has since then been doing the legal rounds, either seeking damages or aiming to get a court order reversing the BCCI's decision.

On May 2, the division bench of the Madras high court set aside a single judge's order directing the BCCI to call for fresh tenders and permitting both Zee and ESS to participate in fresh tender proceedings.

BCCI will now meet to decide the next course of action and to decide whether to call for another tender. Plans are also afoot for the BCCI TV channel, but since there's nothing concrete yet, it's all up to the board to decide what to do next. Importantly, Banerjee said that the verdict could also have a spillover effect on the other cases pending against Dalmiya.