The aftermath

The 10-day drama of allegations and counter allegations, of mass resignation of four trustees from the board of the Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP), and their subsequent return, has not added to their popularity. Anger and cynicism marked the community's reaction to the fracas as reflected in the columns of the Jam-e-Jamshed Weekly, the "Parsi Tari Arsi (PT A)" section of The Bombay Samachar and the W APIZ Page in the Afternoon Despatch and Courier.

Panning the joint statement signed by all the six trustees PT A columnist Berjis Desai noted on July 2, 2006, "They owe the community an explana­tion for all this soap opera they pro­vided us. . . Do the quartet ( chairman Minoa Shroff, and trustees Dinshaw Tamboly, Minoa Engineer and Burjor Antia) and Mehta have the right to level the most serious allegations against each other and then unconditionally with­draw them without offering any reasons for the same?"

The Jame (July 9, 2006) was equally incredulous: "The joint statement wants the reader to believe that the continuing trustees, i.e. even Dinshaw Mehta,

'made an earnest request to the other trustees (i.e. including Dinshaw Tam­boly and Maneck Engineer) to with­draw their resignations.' Possibly, even if one were to wake up Dinshaw Mehta in the middle of the night, he would not make such a request. He would murmur in his sleep 'Good riddance to bad rub­bish."'

Writing in the W APIZ Page of July 13, former BPP trustee and noted tax lawyer Homi Ranina termed the with­drawal of the four resignation, "con­trary to the scheme of elections and without authority of law. The four erst­while trustees cannot enter the BPP office as trustees."

According to public trusts expert Noshir Dadrawala, "The question arises, who or what gave Shroff the power or the authority to accept with such haste the resignation of his three colleagues, without putting the matter before his other two colleagues, the surviving trust­ees Dadi Engineer and Dinshaw Mehta? No resignation can be considered ac­cepted unless decided by all the surviv­ing trustees ... "

A disillusioned ShrofftoldParsiana, "There is no question of our sticking to the chair. The four ofus wanted to go, to make way for new blood. Once the court decides we will know whether to go ahead with the new scheme of elec­tion or old. We came back to stabilize things. Let the community decide what they want, whom they want..."

Arnavaz Mama