03 February 2005	Thursday	23 Zilhaj 1425

NEW DELHI, Feb 2: India's embattled cricket chiefs on Wednesday won a long-running battle in the country's highest court, which upheld their independence and dismissed the appeal by a media group denied lucrative television rights.

The Supreme Court, in a 3-2 ruling, said the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) was an autonomous body which did not come under the purview of the government just because it picked the Indian team.

The court said that if the cash-rich BCCI, which runs the country's most popular sport, was to be held as "an instrumentality of the government", then all other sporting federations should also be declared a "state".

If the court had agreed that the board came under government purview then Zee Tele films, India's largest listed media company, was likely to have kept broadcasting rights granted after a tender process.

The court also dismissed the petition filed by Zee against the BCCI's decision to cancel TV rights which the network insists were awarded to it for the next four years.

The BCCI last September awarded four-year television rights to Zee for a record 308 million dollars. It later cancelled the bid following Zee's legal battle with ESPN-Star Sports in the Bombay High Court. -AFP