NEW DELHI: Six I-League clubs (under the banner of the United I-League Clubs), which met here Tuesday, have made public their strategy to stay relevant. The clubs said they would seek redressal for their collective grievances from the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and FIFA, and, failing that, move court.
Representatives of the six clubs — Quess East Bengal, Mohun Bagan, Churchill Brothers, Minerva Punjab, Aizawl FC and Gokulam Kerala — met senior Supreme Court advocate and former solicitor general of India Mohan Parasaran to chalk out how to approach the matter, The Tribune reports.
Parasaran, it is understood, wanted to look at the few issues before deciding the course of action. One of the issues was the Master Rights Agreement between AIFF and Football Sports Development Limited (FSDL), the AIFF’s commercial partner.
Pertinently, AIFF president Praful Patel, whom the clubs blame for this conundrum, is a member of FIFA’s finance committee as well as a senior vice-president at the AFC.
“This is the right way to go about it and we are making sure that all the remedies are exhausted, and then if nothing works, we go to the court,” Minerva Punjab FC owner Ranjit Bajaj told The Tribune.
“We will go to the court as the last resort. Last resort doesn’t mean we will not file an appeal. It is guaranteed that it will happen, we will definitely go to the court if we don’t get a reply from AFC and FIFA,” he added.
“Our fight in court is going to be on the illegality of the Masters Right Agreement signed by AIFF with FSDL. That is going to be our contention,” a member of an I-League club present at the meeting told Navhind Times.
“The MRA is going to be challenged by our advocates because they have realised that the agreement not only violates many laws of the country but has at places transgressed FIFA laws. There are codes formulated in India that have been overstepped by this agreement,” the member stated.
Whilst club officials of East Bengal and Mohun Bagan have met senior BJP leaders in Kolkata to apprise them of the situation and a request to ask the Prime Minister to intervene to save the two famous clubs from India, Churchill Brothers FC, according to a press release issued by the club, have met Chief Minister Pramod Sawant to brief him of the injustice being meted out to teams that have been harbouring football for decades.
Chief Minister Sawant, as per the press release, has promised to intercede with the Prime Minister on behalf of Churchill Brothers FC.
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