chennai nissan motor india and its sole distributor hover automotive india hai were locked in a public sparring match on friday after the japanese carmaker announced its decision to terminate the master franchise arrangement between them responding to nissans decision hai coo richard spitzer announced that the management had taken strong exception to the move and negotiations were still underway hai understands that nissan wants to move quickly but it is possible only with the cooperation and consent of hai and we look forward to working with nissan and are hopeful of an amicable resolution spitzers statement said until then hai expects to continue to be the sole and exclusive distributor for the nissan brand of vehicles in india the statement also added that there is no legal basis for the termination of the contract by nissan and hai would do whatever necessary to protect the interest of its stakeholders when contacted nissan india spokesperson sent an email response to the hai statement saying nissan carefully considered all options available to it and took appropriate advice before terminating due to the sensitive nature of this matter we have no further comment we are focusing on our indian operations to ensure minimal disruption and to provide our customers with a seamless transition nissan sources added that the termination came after several rounds of negotiations to end the matter amicably which did not yield results and that nissan has only used the termination clause available in the contract with hai and there was nothing illegal about it earlier on friday nissan announced the termination of its sales marketing and distribution arrangement with hai nissan motor india has assumed full responsibility for the sales marketing and distribution of all nissanbranded vehicles and parts in india with immediate effect from february 14 2014 the company said in a statement adding that its agreement with hover for the same had been terminated the announcement comes just before datsun go the first datsunranded mass market car from nissans stable opens for bookings in march kenichiro yomura nissan president india operations said nissan is now at a point of maturity in india where the time is right to establish our own marketing and distribution operations nissans priority will be to ensure a smooth transition from current operations the split between nissan and hover was being speculated ever since the japanese company announced datsuns debut nissan had announced that it would not leave marketing and sales of the datsun brand to hover but would handle it directly given that nissans top management had said that they expect datsun brand to comprise 50 of their entire india sales leaving hover out of this future growth brand seemed to industry experts like an indication of things to come in an earlier interview to toi vincent cobee corporate vp datsun business unitnissan had explained why nissan had decided to handle datsun directly we feel it is time for us to go directly to the market he had said it takes a