Commissioned to represent

Among the first priorities of Navsari-based lawyer Kersi Deboo, who has been appointed as member of the National Commission for Minorities (NCM), will be to liaise with the union and state governments and anjumans on defunct community properties that are under threat of being usurped, he told Parsiana on November 19, 2021. "These are vast, running into crores,” he stated. "There is also the issue of reservation of seats in academic institutions founded by Parsis… That will be my second priority.” The appointment, for a period of three years, was announced in a union government notification dated November 16, 2021. The previous Zoroastrian representative was Udvada High Priest Dastur Khurshed Dastoor. The position was vacant for a period of about a year-and-a-half after Dastoor’s term ended in July 2020. Deboo took charge of his new office in Delhi in the week beginning November 22.
An amateur historian and trustee in several community trusts, 70-year-old Deboo has served as a director in the Gujarat Minorities Finance and Development Corporation from 2011 to 2015. He is honorary secretary of the Navsari District Branch of the Indian Red Cross Society, a trustee of the Rotary Eye Institute and College of Ophthalmology, treasurer of Manav Rog Nivaran Mandal that works in the areas of leprosy and malnutrition, and trustee of Navsari’s R. F. Daboo Parsi General Hospital, according to his curriculum vitae (CV). His academic affiliations include honorary secretaryship at The S. B. Garda College Trust that manages three colleges in arts, commerce and law and trusteeship of the Navsari Kelavni Mandal that manages two high schools.
A columnist in various newspapers, Deboo’s CV states that he has written more than 200 articles on his home town. Politically active since 1980, Deboo told us that he is a member of the working committee of the Navsari district office of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

The union government set up the NCM in 1992. Six communities, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Zoroastrians (Parsis) and Jains are notified as minorities. Certain state governments have constituted state minorities commissions. "These organizations are set up to safeguard and protect the interests of minorities as provided in the Constitution of India and laws enacted by Parliament and state legislatures,” states the NCM website.
Iqbal Singh Lalpura is NCM chairperson and Atif Rasheed vice chairperson. "Representatives from Buddhist, Christian, Jain and other minorities are being appointed” on the national body, Deboo told Parsiana.
Trustee of the Calcutta Zoroastrian Community’s Religious and Charity Fund Cyrus Madan has been representing Parsis in the West Bengal Commission since October 2020 while businessman Gusti Noria is the community representative in the Telangana body since January 2018. On the Maharashtra Commission for Minorities there is no Zoroastrian representative despite Bombay housing the largest number of Parsis in the country.
Farrokh Jijina