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The consortium partners of IPL's Kochi franchise have asked the BCCI to further extend the time given to resolve their ownership issues. According to sources, the consortium partners sent a letter to BCCI on November 16 seeking for at least two more months.
The BCCI, however, has decided not to entertain the request. "The members of the IPL governing council feel they (the Kochi consortium) have already been given enough time to come clean on their differences. It (the time given by BCCI to the partners) can't be extended any further," said a senior member.
The council, however, has decided to wait till November 27, when the one-month period given to resolve their differences expires, before taking a final decision. "If they fail to have an amicable solution by then, the board will invite fresh bids for the eighth team," he said.
Meanwhile, the Kochi partners continue to remain in a bitter fight over team ownership. "We are more or less stuck at the same spot where we were a month ago," said a member of the consortium. The consortium is divided into two camps the Gaekwad family that owns Rendezvous Sports World, the company that bid for the team, and the investors that include Anchor Group (27%), Parinee Developers (26%), Film Waves Combine (12%), Anand Shah (8%), Vivek Venugopal (1%) and Rendezvous Sports Ltd(1%).
The partners had floated an unincorporated venture at the time of bidding, in which Rendezvous Sports was given 26% stake, of which 25% was free equity given to the promoters in return of their efforts to put the team together. At the time of registering the venture, the investors, however, objected to the promoters getting free equity and asked the promoters to either pay for a significant part of it or to cede control of the venture to the investors' camp.
The Gaekwads, so far, have refused to cede ownership. They have instead offered to pay for at least 15% of the free equity "The message we are getting from them is that they would rather drop out of IPL than give away the control to anybody else," said a source close to the development.
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