East Bengal announces meeting with Emami Group after 1 July ahead of potential tie-up

Kolkata: East Bengal’s potential tie-up with Emami Group was further delayed and the two parties would sit in a meeting only after 1 July, the club announced on Sunday. “We have consulted our legal team after receiving the agreement from Emami Group. Our legal team then has sent their draft to the Emami Group,” East Bengal joint secretary Rupak Saha said in a statement. “They have a social function on July 1 and I hope that we will be able to sit down together and get it done as soon as possible,” he added. It’s been close to a month now when West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee announced the “tieup” between Emami Group and East Bengal but since then no agreement has been signed yet. Among other things, Emami Group reportedly wants a majority stake of 80 percent in the club. “I can’t disclose the details but there has not been any hurdle yet. We are hopeful of reaching an agreement,” Emami Group director Aditya Agarwal told PTI. With the picture still not clear about their ISL participation in the upcoming season, the club’s team building has stopped midway after a handful of announcements. Midfielder Mobashir Rahman, who represented League Shield winners Jamshedpur FC, was the last to have joined the club. On the team building he said: “We will cross the bridge when it comes. We will go ahead only after we get a green signal.” The red-and-gold had two disastrous ISL seasons playing under the aegis of ‘SC East Bengal’. In their ISL debut in 2020-21, they finished ninth out of 11 teams, and in the last season they finished rock-bottom as their association with Shree Cement Ltd ended prematurely. SCL had bought a majority stake of 76 percent in the beleaguered East Bengal on 2 September, 2020, to help them enter ISL in a last minute entry. But East Bengal’s association did not go off well as their executive committee refused to sign the final agreement, claiming discrepancies in the initial term leading to the investors’ pullout after the last season. Before SCL, Quess Corp had bought a 70 percent stake in East Bengal in 2018 but the relationship soured between the two entities and it lasted for two years before the Bengaluru-based group parted ways in June 2020.