Court binds BCCI until final order: NDTV emerges rights frontrunner

Even as the Bombay High Court on Tuesday reserved its order on a petition filed by Sony Entertainment challenging the termination of its contract to broadcast IPL matches by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), the home ministry has said it had sent a revised tournament schedule to states for their comments. New Delhi, Jaipur and Visakhapatnam have been dropped as venues in the revised schedule submitted to the ministry on Tuesday.

In court, Sony lawyer Iqbal Chhagla stated that legal rights were yet to be established, as the notice given to Sony was not a termination letter. “The notice of termination, given on Saturday, a non-working day, would have come into effect only on March 16 (Monday),” he said. BCCI lawyer V Tulzapurkar countered this, saying that a termination letter had indeed been served. He also added that the contract with Sony was terminated because the “quality of broadcasting” was “bad”.

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Homage paid to country’s real heroes with gallantry awards

Emotions ran high and thunderous applause reverberated the Rajpath on Monday as kin of six security personnel who died fighting terrorists during the Mumbai attacks, received the Ashok Chakra during the Republic day celebrations in New Delhi.

Maharashtra ATS chief Hemant Karkare, additional commissioner Ashok Kamte and four others who lost their lives in the Mumbai carnage were among the 11 security personnel honoured with the highest peace time gallantry award.

Thousands of people including foreign invitees accoladed the supreme sacrifice of the security personnel as President Pratibha Patil presented the awards.

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Satyam gets buyout offers

A Satyam Computer Services sell-off could follow the way of erstwhile Unit Trust of India. This would mean bifurcating the company: one part with the troubled assets taking upon itself the lawsuits, which would be handled with government help, while the functional business part would be sold off. But a decision on any such plan would have to be taken by the new board, which will be meeting in Hyderabad on Thursday and Friday.

The possibility of a buyout was confirmed on Tuesday by Tarun Das,one of the six-member board headed by Deepak Parekh. He told reporters that some domestic and foreign companies had expressed interest in taking over the IT company. “The board has not yet discussed the issue of looking for a buyer. But I have to truthfully say, we have been approached by potential buyers,” said Das, chief mentor of CII, at The Partnership Summit 2009 in New Delhi. He said offers had come from multinational entities and Indian IT companies.

While Das did not name the interested companies, L&T chief AM Naik met corporate affairs minister Prem Chand Gupta along with key ministry officials and discussed options related to L&T’s ‘strategic’ investment in Satyam.

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Air services unaffected but Kolkata grounded

The country-wide 12-hour strike call given by the central public sector trade unions left air services in the country largely unaffected.

The country's two busiest airports,New Delhi and Mumbai, were barely affected as they were privately run and had a contingency plan in place. The Kolkata airport was the worst affected with most international and domestic flights scheduled for take-off or landing on Wednesday either postponed or eventually cancelled.

Nearly 15,000 workers baggage handlers, cleaners and ground staff-at127 government-run airports walked off their jobs early Wednesday morning.

In Delhi, Airports Authority of India officials said going by the number of flights across the country, the schedules were running" almost normally".

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