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The ambitious North-East Premier League (NEPL) is set for a March 2012 launch. It is an AIFF initiative being pushed by the federations vice-president Ankur Dutta, who hails from the Northeast. The NEPL is an effort to promote football in the region with Calcutta-based Celebrity Management Group set to organise the league. The overall prize money would be Rs 10 Million (1 crore) with the clubs set to earn further potential revenues from TV rights and sponsorship sales.
The NEPL will feature the state champions from Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura. There had been an earlier proposal to include the champions of Sikkim as the eight team, but that idea has been dropped due to logistical reasons. Now a pre-tournament will be held amongst the state league runners-up of the seven states to determine the eighth team.
As per plans the eight participating teams will be split into two groups of four teams each with all playing each other home-and-away in the group stage. From there the top two teams will qualify for the semifinals with the winners moving on into the finals.
As per the NEPL rules only commercial entity football clubs will be allowed to participate meaning Public Sector Undertaking clubs, which are common in the Northeast will not be allowed to participate; while winning the league will open opportunities in the I-League Division 2.
The NEPL is set to be played over a nine week period from March 2012 onwards with travel and fatigue a potential problem which the organisers would have to look into.
