‘Telecast row may threaten Aussie tour’

that all the matches are televised. Earlier on September 6, the tender process had been challenged by ESPN-Star Sports through a petition questioning award of cricket telecast rights to Zee by BCCI.

During his submission before the bench, Venugopal also said the board has powers to cancel the tender process as mentioned in the original bid document presented by it.

‘‘The tender gives us the right to cancel the whole process,’’ said Venugopal and added that the BCCI may call for a fresh bid from both these parties as well as the other three parties and may decide on the winner on the basis of the highest bid.

A similar suggestion by the Bombay High Court has already been turned down by Zee TV and on Monday its counsel Harish Salve again rejected the idea.

Venugopal also said Clause 3.2 of the tender which deals with the eligibility in terms of experience and production capacity may be done away with and the new tender would just focus on the highest bid.

‘‘If we go by the eligibility criteria, both ESPN-Star Sports and Zee get disqualified. We believe both the parties are ineligible, so the fresh bids could be one way of solving the matter,’’ Venugopal told reporters after the days proceedings.

During his submission, Venugopal said he would not bring up the question of ‘maintainability’ of the ESPN-Star Sports writ petition as it would eat up into too much of time.

‘‘Any company which gets the rights will need at least 14 days to set up the whole process. So if we proceed further on this, we would stand to lose at least 3 to 5 days.’’

Earlier, Zee counsel Salve wound up his arguments before the bench urging it to again look at ESPN-Star Sports’ eligibility.

The case would now come up for hearing on Tuesday with the BCCI lawyer continuing his arguments.