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16 Indian umpires along with members of the International Cricket Council (ICC) Elite Panel will officiate in the lucrative Indian Premier League (IPL) beginning in April, a top board official said on Monday.

"In all, 16 Indian umpires will be deployed for the IPL. In addition, we are trying to get all the members of the ICC Elite Panel," Niranjan Shah, secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), told IANS.

"Since we need many umpires - like the TV officials and the fourth/reserve umpires - we will require the services of a lot of Indian umpires as well," he said.

The names of the 16 Indian umpires are yet to be finalised, according to Niranjan.

An ICC source said the world governing body would not have objection to the IPL using those Elite Panel umpires who are free from any Tests and One Day Internationals (ODIs) duties during that 44-day period beginning April 18.

The eight-team tournament will have 59 20-20 matches. The winning team will receive $3 million.

The eight franchises spent more than $718 million to buy the team at the auction. The franchise and the owners are: Mumbai team (Mukesh Ambani), Bangalore (Vijay Mallya), Kolkata (Shah Rukh Khan), Chandigarh (Preity Zinta), Jaipur (Emerging Media), Hyderabad (Deccan Chronicle), Chennai (India Cements) and Delhi (GMR Group).

While India has no umpires in the elite panel, there are three - A.M. Saheba, S.L. Shastri and G.A. Pratapkumar - in the International Panel.

The BCCI, which has its own Elite Panel, has a number of umpires on its list for 2007-08 and it is from here that the IPL umpires will be chosen.

The umpires are: SK Tarapore, K Hariharan, AV Jayprakash, SN Bandekar, SD Ranade, AY Gokhale, CR Mohite, R Radhakrishanan, Sudhir Asnani, MSS Ranawat, Ravi Subramaniam, I Sivaram, VN Kulkarni, Sanjeev Rao, HS Sekhon, KG Laxminarayanan, Suhas Pahdkar, SK Sharma, P Bhanuprakash, PS Godbole, MS Mahal, K Murali, RY Deshmukh, S Dendapani, A Bhattacharjee, S Laxmanan, Balwant Sharma, Sanjeev Dua, SM Raju, MG Mandale, Rajiv Risodkar, Anil Chaudhary, VD Nerurkar, Nandan, NRS Prabhu, RM Deshpande and MS Pathak.