GUWAHATI, Dec 25 � The first Governing Council Meeting of the North East Premier League (NEPL) was held at Hotel Landmark, here recently, stated a release.
The meeting was presided over by the chairman of NEPL Ankur Dutta who is also the the vice president of All India Football Federation. The meeting was also attended by the Governing Council members and representatives from Celebrity Management Group (CMG). The NEPL is planned to promote football in the North East region with Kolkata based Celebrity Management Group set to sponsor the league. The NEPL will feature the State champions from Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura. The proposal to include the champions of Sikkim as the eighth team has been dropped due to logistical reasons. A qualifying tournament will be held amongst the state league runners-up of the seven states and the winner of this qualifying round will be the eighth team.
Only commercial entity football clubs will be allowed to participate in the NEPL, which rules out participation of the Public Sector Undertaking clubs and the goverment based football clubs. The NEPL, which will last for nine weeks during which 61 matches will be played, will start from the later part of March, 2012. All the teams will play in home and away basis, the four best teams will qualify for semi finals, and the semi final winners will meet in the grand finale.
Bhaskar Goswami the managing director of the CMG will be the CEO of the NEPL, the headquarters and offfce the NEPL will be soon be started in Guwahati.
