This paper deals with the Automatic Generation Control (AGC) strategy for multi-source interconnected power system in deregulated environment. Physical constraints like Generation Rate Constraints (GRC), Governor Dead Band (GDB) and Boiler Dynamics (BD) are incorporated in the system for the realistic approach. In this paper, an accurate model of HVDC tie-link is considered for the proposed AGC mechanism. Inertia Emulation based Control (INEC) technique is adopted to utilize the stored energy of HVDC tie-link of the interconnected power system. Distributed Generation (DG) system is also considered in the proposed AGC structure. The DG system comprises of Solar Photovoltaic (SPV), Wind Turbine System (WTS), Diesel Engine Generator (DEG), Aqua Electrolyzer (AE) and Fuel Cell (FC). Finally, a novel application of Volleyball Premier League (VPL) algorithm has been introduced to obtain the optimized gains of the proposed controller. The proposed controller includes the cascade structure of 2-Degree of Freedom Proportional-Integral controller and Fractional Order Proportional-Derivative controller with filter (2-DOF-PI-FOPDN). The robustness and effectiveness of VPL algorithm based proposed controller has been tested by comparing with the published literatures on same platform.