A shooting fight
Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) chairman Dinshaw Mehta and BPP trustee Yazdi Desai spar over permission for a film shoot at Rustom Baug
The mistrust amongst the Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) trustees results in even routine matters becoming issues of contention. Two emails exchanged between the BPP chairman Dinshaw Mehta and BPP and World Alliance of Parsi Irani Zarthoshtis (WAPIZ) founder trustee Yazdi Desai over a film shoot at Rustom Baug reflects the degree of animosity between the two warring factions.
I have attached a scan of the letter issued by Mehta unilaterally and unauthorizedly allowing film shooting in Rustom Baug without the permission of the board. His lame excuse that the request could not be "forwarded to the board for the board’s approval as the intervening two days are Diwali holidays” is unacceptable. An email could easily have been sent to all the trustees by him.
As a resident trustee of Rustom Baug, I should definitely have been consulted and this is one more of the innumerable instances wherein Mehta is attempting to run the BPP as his own family trust and personal fiefdom.
Mehta is called upon to cancel the unauthorized and unilateral permission given by him immediately, failing which such action as is deemed appropriate will be taken.
Email dated October 25, 2014, 1.34 a.m. from Mehta to Desai, copied to co-trustees and others
At around 5 p.m. on Wednesday October 22, 2014 members of the lawfully elected managing committee of Rustom Baug Pavilion contacted me with a request to grant permission for film shooting on Saturday October 25 so that they could earn much needed funds for their club. As the permission letter was required to be typed and delivered to them by 5.45 p.m. that same evening there was no time to contact anybody with two intervening holidays.
Since the duly elected managing committee of Rustom Baug Pavilion requested our support to gain some much needed revenue of about one to 1.5 lakh rupees for the club and even we would earn two lakhs at a time when we are facing acute financial crisis, as chairman I deemed it expedient to grant the permission in the larger interest of all concerned.
Yazdi may be residing in Rustom Baug as a ghar jamai (resident son-in-law) by misusing his powers as a trustee but that does not give him proprietary rights over Rustom Baug...
Let the program go on as per permission given and let us discuss the issue on Tuesday’s board meeting and you can thereafter take whatever action you have threatened against me if I have done anything wrong. Do not create a law and order problem out of spite and vengeance just because your wife lost the election (in 2011) to Muncherji Cama. Already you have made the whole community pay and suffer enough in retaliation and punishment for not electing your wife.