The triumph of Tirandaz
After winning a keenly contested election sitting trustee Armaity Tirandaz says she will “follow her conscience” while deciding issues
Armaity Tirandaz: trustee again
Mistry had the backing of sitting trustee Kersi Randeria and his weekly Parsi Times (PT) which prominently featured Mistry’s advertisements in each issue. Mehta, on the other hand, enriched the Jam-e-Jamshed (JJ) flooding the Sunday weekly with advertisements for Tirandaz and a few for his other sponsored candidates, Kersi Sethna and Eric Dhatigara. The duo were inducted lest Tirandaz was pressured to withdraw and also to permit Mehta a legitimate voice in the electoral process as a representative of Sethna. Both Sethna and Dhatigara urged voters to cast their ballot for Tirandaz.
Mehta supporters, Dr Viraf Kapadia, Raiomand Zaiwalla, Sethna and Dhatigara even moved a petition in the Bombay High Court pleading the BPP be restrained from using the electronic voting machines (EVM) till all the modalities were formalized. Paper ballots should be used instead, they averred. The no-nonsense judge, Justice Shahrukh Kathawala on March 31 turned down the proposal, inquiring why the petitioners had moved the court so late. Their counsel Shiraz Rustomjee acknowledged that the petition was delayed and said the petitioners at least wanted that the candidates or their representatives be present during the opening and closing of the EVMs and during balloting. This would be in addition to the presence of the accounting firm of Deloitte Haskins and Sells who were engaged to audit the polling process. In the October 2015 elections, with 23 candidates in the fray, the BPP trustees fearing it would be difficult to manage such a large crowd forbade candidates or their representatives from overseeing the balloting and counting procedures leaving only the auditors to supervise the locking and unlocking of machines, balloting, tallying of results, etc. This ban caused Mehta to raise a ruckus over the exclusion, reportedly even barging into one of the counting halls after polling hours and delaying the count.
From left: Arnavaz Mistry, Ervad Rayomand Joshi, Kersi Sethna and Eric Dhatigara
Court representative K. K. Tiwari at Dadar; Mahiyar Dastoor; Yazdi Tantra
On April 4, the BPP trustees once again approached Kathawala seeking clarification as to when and where the candidate or his representative could be present. Kathawala reportedly told them if they could not agree on the procedures he would appoint court officials to oversee the process. He called both sides to his chambers that evening at 5.30 to discuss the modalities. When he reiterated his offer of appointing court officials, Randeria said the trustees were in favor. BPP trustee Viraf Mehta opposed the appointment but as the majority of the trustees, BPP chairman Yazdi Desai, Randeria, Zarir Bhathena and Noshir Dadrawala were in favor, Kathawala named five officers to oversee the operations at the five venues. Kathawala also requested Rustomjee and the BPP counsel Yazdi Dandiwala to remain in Bombay on the polling Sunday and be available in case of any disputes. Rustomjee stated, "We are not here to disturb this election.” "You are fortunate both sides are reasonable,” Kathawala said, "All of you must abide by what they say.” If there were any differences at the venues the dispute was to be taken up with the court representative and not the trustees. "I don’t want any dispute on this...” He also warned all present that he didn’t want any "pangas” (quarrels) on election day.
"You want transparency you are getting it,” said the judge.
Kathawala urged the BPP to "try to have CCTV cameras at all venues. Next time we will come to know who is the mischief maker.”
With all these safeguards in place and the efforts made to see to the comfort of voters — numbered tokens, shaded seating, water, tea, coffee, portable toilets — the elections went off without any hitch. The only disappointment perhaps was the low turnout, 5,101 voters as versus 9,853 in October 2016.
Photography by the Press was permitted in the waiting and voter registration areas. Only at Rustom Baug an objection was raised to the Parsiana photographer entering the registration area; after making a phone call to Dastoor and asking why only Rustom Baug should bar photography, the Rustom Baug officials permitted the photographer to stand at the very periphery of the registration area.
Forms seeking voter information were distributed at all the centers. The objective of the exercise was to prepare a Parsi voter Aadhar card and to update the antiquated BPP polling list. Scanning machines made photocopies of original, government identity cards while photographers clicked pictures of the voters.
At the Khareghat Colony venue when Cmde Aspi Marker (retd) announced that BPP is in the process of updating its records, Dinshaw Mehta came on the mike to announce that there is no need to fill the forms or give proof of identity. Immediately followed a clarification from Randeria specifying that the earlier announcement negating the exercise was made by an ex-trustee. He stated that out of 30,000 plus voters registered with the BPP, barely 10,000 came to vote so they were attempting to update the records.
Yazdi Desai felicitating Tirandaz
There was also a delay in the commencement of polling at Khareghat Colony due to the candidates’ representatives not coming early enough to complete the pre-poll formalities and because some candidates/representatives insisted on checking each and every EVM, explained chief technology officer of the elections Yazdi Tantra. This verification was not insisted upon at the other centers, Tantra said. At the Bharucha Baug voting center, Viraf Mehta raised an objection to the software reportedly being loaded on the EVMs two days prior to the polling. The Deloitte representative explained to Viraf it was not possible to prepare all the 64 EVMs (10 for each center plus 14 standby) at the five centers on the polling day itself. He said he had spoken to Rustomjee who advised him not to make the complaint an issue.
Tantra explained the software which counts the votes has to be installed in a controlled environment and that Deloitte had checked and sealed each and every machine. The seals were broken on the morning of April 10 in the presence of the court official, the polling agents and the candidates or their representatives.
The election was estimated to cost around Rs 33,00,000 (US $ 49,571). The cost of legal proceedings for both sides must have amounted to another Rs 30,00,000 (US $ 45,065).
Ironically, once the elections were over both Dinshaw and Viraf who opposed the appointment of court officials credited their presence as being the reason for a fair poll being conducted. Dinshaw said if the officers had been there at the October 2015 trusteeship elections the results would have been different. He called for an examination/investigation of the earlier poll. "Those who lost should now challenge the results,” he asserted. Viraf attributed Tirandaz’s victory to "nothing but transparency.” Dinshaw criticized the Mistry/Randeria camp for departing from the Dadar venue once the unofficial figures showed Tirandaz as the winner, instead of staying to congratulate her. Her supporters and Dinshaw’s family members had to urge him not to vitiate the atmosphere with acrimony. Election chairman Mahiyar Dastoor announced the official results at around 10 p.m. (see box).
When asked if she had expected to win, Tirandaz replied that her late husband Rustom always told her, "Till the last vote is counted don’t have any expectations!”
"Mother hen”
"Life is all about choices, not chances,” said Tirandaz, in the BPP boardroom on April 12, 2016, at a brief function to felicitate her victory.
Gesturing towards the co-trustees, staff of the BPP, the Press and her relatives present in the room she said she was "returning as mother hen to my family.” She quipped that she went into the fray with the mindset that "if I win, I would have my seat back, and if not, I would have won hearts.” Recalling the men and women she met during the campaign, she mentioned their warmth and courtesy towards her.
"I am going to follow my conscience,” she told those assembled, adding that she was aware that she would have crosses to bear and joys of achievements in the course of her term as trustee, and that she would not be able to please all. "We will make sure that as a board we do our best to help as many as possible,” she said. She ended with the remark that the secret of unity is tolerance of differences.
Desai in a lighter vein quipped that Tirandaz owed some part of her victory to the previous board "who allowed her to campaign when she left previous board meetings early.”
Viraf said he was "very happy that she would be sitting next to him in the boardroom.” Wishing her all the best, co-trustee Bhathena mentioned that he was glad to have her back in the boardroom and commented that "we should be united in all our decisions.” Randeria stated that six months ago they were strangers (he was elected to the board in October 2015), but "learnt how to work together.” Dadrawala said he hoped to work with Tirandaz "in harmony.” He made a plea for formalizing the voluntary code of conduct for trusteeship elections soon and stated that he had remained neutral and neither canvassed for any candidate in the current election, nor cast his vote.
Referring to Tirandaz’s pet project — a home for children with special needs — Dinshaw Mehta said this had been on the back burner due to differences of opinion among previous board members. He hoped that "the new board will deliver soon on this matter.” Dhatigara, who won 61 votes, the second lowest, felicitated Tirandaz, stating that his presence in the boardroom was the first step in his achieving a personal goal — trusteeship.