Wasting judicial time

An appeal bench of the Bombay High Court has adjourned to April 25, 2007 the date for delivering their judgment on whether the four trustees of the Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) who resigned and withdrew their resignations, can continue in office or not.

The World Alliance of Parsi Irani Zarthoshtis (WAPIZ) members Khojeste Mistree, Yazdi Desai and Hoshang Wania filed the appeal challenging the four trustees’ (Minoo Shroff, Dinshaw Tamboly, Maneck Engineer and Burjor Antia) right to continue in office before Bombay High Court Justices R. M. S. Khandeparkar and D. G. Karnik.

The BPP counsel Iqbal Chagla had asked the court on April 4 to defer their decision till Bombay High Court Judge A. M. Khanwilkar delivered his decision permitting adult franchise on April 5, 2007. Chagla noted that if Khanwilkar approved the revised election scheme, under which all the trustees would resign once fresh elections were held, the appeal for dismissal would be "academic.” The petition he said would just be "taking up your lordship’s judicial time.” The elections would be held in six months’ time, he added.

Mistree’s counsel Kirti Munshi argued that if the appeal for dismissal was upheld, then the trustees would not have had the necessary quorum to pass the amended scheme now before Khanwil­kar.

"Instead of fighting and going to court, sort it out,” advised Khandeparkar. "What is the point of wasting time? If the scheme changes what remains in the matter?”

The judges set April 11 for giving their judgment but the date was further adjourned till April 25 so that Khan-wilkar’s written judgment would be available for study.

After the hearing WAPIZ founder member and former BPP trustee Homi Ranina, who appeared to be spearheading the legal battle on behalf of Mistree and the others, was asked by Parsiana what purpose the litigation served when the trustees were all to resign if Khanwil-kar approved the scheme the next day.

Ranina said the trustees would continue in office for a year till the elections were held. When pressed further on what difference this would make when they would all resign anyway, he repeated the same point and then turned away to talk to Mistree. Khanwilkar ordered the election to be held in six months’ time.

On February 8, 2007 Bombay High Court Justice Roshan S. Dalvi negated the contention put forward by Mistree and company that the trustees could not continue in office once having submitted their resignations.

Her written order noted that according to the BPP election scheme a resignation "has to be by way of a letter in writing to the trust… The letter of resignation by a trustee has therefore to be addressed to and received by all the trustees. It cannot be addressed to one or some of them.” None of the letters were "addressed to or received by the trustees. The clear and explicit provisions in the clauses are therefore not complied by any of these trustees.”

Three letters were addressed to the BPP chairman Minoo Shroff. "The concept of a chairman of the trust is unknown to law. Unless the scheme specifically makes any provision for either any additional powers, duties, rights or responsibilities to any one of the trustees as the chairman of the trust, no trustee can assume to himself an added position of such chairman. No such specific or express provision in the scheme is shown to court. Besides it is no part of the function of the chairman to do the ministerial act of forwarding resignations of some trustees to the other trustees,” Dalvi noted.

For or against?

The Jam-e-Jamshed Weekly of April 8, 2007 carried a front page report on Khanwilkar’s judgment with the headline stating "Universal Adult Franchise now a reality despite opposition from WAPIZ.”

The vituperative WAPIZ Page that appears every fortnight in the Afternoon Despatch and Courier disputed Jame’s claim in its issue of April 12, 2007, the headline stating "WAPIZ is certainly not against universal adult franchise (UAF).” The orthodox group claimed they "intervened in the UAF petition with the sole purpose of ensuring that UAF should not be used as an excuse to delay elections even further.” This was not the argument their counsel put forth in court.

Mistree and the others opposed the scheme for adult franchise claiming that the newly elected Anjuman Committee (AC) consisted of those people who were interested in the elections. "The rest (of the community) is not interested,” claimed Munshi. "The present system (of the AC) is good,” he averred.

Khanwilkar did not agree with WAPIZ’s contention and passed his order on April 5, 2007 favoring UAF for all Parsi Zoroastrians over the age of 18 years.

Noted solicitor and The Bombay Samachar columnist Berjis Desai, who played an instrumental role in the court battle for adult franchise and in the opposition to the WAPIZ case for dismissal of trustees, wrote in his "Parsi Tari Arsi” column of April 8: "What happens now? The million dollar question before WAPIZ and its supporters is whether to appeal or not against this order of Justice Khanwilkar. The chance of any such appeal succeeding is minimal to the extent of almost being non-existent.”

Whatever the differences in the community between the warring factions, the judiciary has shown it will encourage and protect the rights of the common person. Sixty years after all Indians attained the right to vote, the Parsi Irani Zoroastrian community of Bombay will finally be able to vote for its leaders.