he is a superstar director but S S Rajamouli was unfamiliar with Hindi-speaking audiences till last week when his Bahubali — The Beginning made a record-breaking Rs 50 crore on its opening day across Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam and Hindi, the highest ever for an Indian film.
Rajamouli has consistently broken new ground, but Bahubali is his biggest undertaking to date. It took three years to make and is reported to be the most expensive Indian film ever. There is a massive tug-of-war raging among powerful lobbies inside the Indian cricket board (BCCI) ahead of the IPL governing council meeting here on Sunday.
One lobby strongly feels that the contracts with Chennai Super Kings (CSK) and Rajasthan Royals (RR) need to be terminated with immediate effect. The Justice Lodha committee report, along with clause 11.3 in the Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise contract, makes a provision for this.
Another lobby feels a two-year suspension for these franchises is punishment enough and terminating their contracts will be harmful or 'brand IPL' and unfair on CSK and RR, who have both put in an eight-year investment into the tournament.
There are very senior politicians, Supreme Court lawyers, experienced BCCI administrators, accomplished businessmen and bureaucrats involved in this hectic lobbying. Which ideology will decide the future of the two beleaguered franchises, who have been suspended for two years by the Supreme Court-appointed committee?
The governing council of the IPL, headed by Rajeev Shukla, will meet in Mumbai on Sunday afternoon to discuss the future of these two franchises even as it sits down to figure how to implement the reforms suggested by the Lodha Committee. There's no word yet on whether a decision on the franchises will be taken on Sunday or kept aside for the BCCI's general body to take the final call.
Justice RM Lodha, a former Chief Justice of India, has said that it is for the BCCI to take a call on whether they want to terminate the two franchises. He has added that they will be within their rights to do so.
The lobby that has called for termination is of the view that if the Lodha committee's report has to be properly implemented, then relieving CSK and RR of their contracts is the only way forward. Meanwhile, taking cue from what IPL chairman Rajeev Shukla has said already -that there is the option of allowing the two teams to be run by the board itself, and former cricketers, for the next two years -there are those who feel that keeping CSK and RR away from the IPL until the 2017 edition will be enough.
In 2018, there will be fresh bidding for the IPL media rights and valuations are expected to double as the race for television rights hots up. Those who have been in the game long enough know that is the pie they would like to get a slice of.
As the sword hangs on their future, legal luminaries are already being roped in by CSK and RR to figure out a future course of action.There is no doubting the two franchises will go to court if sacked. Between 2010 and now, the cricket board has terminated its contract with five IPL franchises. Of those five, three made a comeback after fighting court battles and two are currently in arbitration with the cricket board. “We’re not sure that the peace process will be mentioned, but even if it is, the section will be very short,” senior White House advisors assured me on Wednesday, May 18, 2011, on the eve of Obama’s nationally televised address. Titled “U.S. Policy in Middle East and North Africa,” the text would furnish a vision of America’s future relations with a revolutionary Middle East, an epic follow-up to the historic Cairo speech two years earlier. Israel and the Palestinians were simply not the focus, the advisors said.
I wanted to believe them. Mahmoud Abbas had just published an op-ed in The New York Times announcing his intention to declare a Palestinian state unilaterally in the UN and then sue Israel in international courts for illegally occupying that state. The Palestinian leader who renounced violence now revealed that his opposition was largely tactical. Terrorism could not defeat Israel, only stain the Palestinians’ reputation and divert global attention from settlements. But a policy designed to isolate, delegitimize, and sanction Israel could bring about its downfall. Lawfare, rather than warfare, became Abbas’s weapon of choice.
Yet, in turning to the international courts, Abbas not only threatened Israel, he violated long-standing Palestinian commitments to the United States. These obligated the Palestinian Authority to seek peace only through negotiations. On the eve of February’s Security Council vote on settlements, he rejected Obama’s offer to embrace the Palestinian position on borders and forced him to veto his own policy. Why, then, would the president now concede the 1967 lines and once again reward Palestinian ill will?
That question recurred to me as I viewed the speech on my office television. My invitation to the event, held at the State Department, had been lost in the embassy’s email—fortunately—for I, alone among the ambassadors present, could not have clapped. Instead, I watched as the president praised the bin Laden operation and pledged to support Middle East democracy, and then devoted a full quarter of his remarks to the peace process. Obama reiterated his belief that the status quo was not sustainable, that the Palestinians living west of the Jordan would eventually outnumber the Jews, and that “technology will make it harder for Israel to defend itself.” He called for the resumption of talks on security and territory as well as efforts to find a “fair and just” solution to the Jerusalem and refugee issues. But then, at last, came the long-dreaded sentence: “We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps.”
The Internet headlines instantly flashed: Obama endorses the ’67 borders. The rest of the speech, intended to be one of the most memorable of his term, was roundly ignored. The Palestinian Authority, joined by the Quartet, applauded the 1967 reference, and Republicans condemned it as “throwing Israel under the bus.” But the most vehement response came from Netanyahu. Speaking about his scheduled meeting with Obama the following day, Netanyahu said that he would “expect” the president to reaffirm that Israel would never return to the
1967 lines, that Israeli forces would remain in the Jordan Valley, and that Palestinian refugees would not be resettled in Israel. “The Palestinians . . . must recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people, and any peace agreement with them must end all claims against Israel,” Netanyahu said expectantly. And I expected sparks.