By Aakash Kumar
New Delhi, Nov 21 (IANS): Baseline Ventures are contemplating to take legal action against the Volleyball Federation of India (VFI) after it announced it has terminated the contract with the company, who were the co-owners of Pro Volleyball League (PVL), due to "breach of agreement".
Joy Bhattacharjya, CEO of Baseline Ventures, rejected all the accusations of the company manipulating the accounts as made by VFI Secretary General Ramavtar Singh Jhakar.
"They cannot terminate the contract. They should first tell what mistakes we committed, giving us a time frame of 10 days to respond. If that doesn't happen, only then they can terminate the contract. It's illegal," Joy told IANS.
"A termination notice was received from the VFI with no substantiation on the reasons for termination. VFI didn't send us even a single query or email regarding what they consider as breach of agreement. They just said that they apprehend that the accounts are manipulated.
"Its complete injustice with Baseline Ventures," he added.
In the termination notice, VFI said that Baseline "failed to commence Women's Volleyball League and Men & Women's Beach Volleyball League in India."
"Even in the Volleyball League, the conduct of the Baseline was replete with high-headedness, unfair commercial practices, unethical practices, non-payment of minimum guarantee fee on time and actions which were against the terms of the agreement," it added.
Reacting to the termination notice, the Baseline CEO said: "This is devastating news for the players and fans. Given that the VFI President and the FIVB President blessed the league and promised to attend the finals shows the total support for the PVL. We will fight this attempt by vested interests to stop the league on all possible fronts."
"We will publicly make it clear that we are not involved in any kind of wrong doing. We want to tell people that this man (VFI Secretary General) is defaming us. Ramavtar has even embarrassed VFI President S. Vasudevan by terminating the contract," said Joy.
"We will go the court regarding the termination notice because it is completely unfair," he added.
Earlier this month, it was announced that the second edition of PVL would start from February 7, 2020 onwards. However, on Monday, the VFI said "it has decided to amicably settle/(sent) termination notice to Baseline Ventures India Private Limited with immediate effect since they (Baseline Ventures) have breached the agreement."
"The house," the release added, "has unanimously decided to hold season-2 of the Volleyball League in the name of Indian Volley League (IVL)/National Volleyball League (NVL) from February 25, 2020 onwards by VFI."