BENGALURU/MUMBAI: Former Tata Trustee Mehli Mistry has said that Tata Trusts’ plan to amend restrictive clauses that limit trustee eligibility at an affiliate trust to Zoroastrians amounts to an admission that its current board is not in compliance with the 103-year-old trust's current laws.
Mistry, a close confidante of late Ratan Tata who was ousted from all but one of the Tata Trusts in October last year, also said any such amendment to the Bai Hirabai Jamsetji Tata Navsari Charitable Institution would apply only prospectively, and cannot validate the appointment of existing trustees who do not meet the eligibility criteria under the current deed.
“Any such amendment would require an application before the Maharashtra Charity Commissioner, who would hear all concerned parties. Any order passed pursuant thereto can operate only prospectively from the date of such order and cannot have a retrospective effect,” Mistry said in a statement on Monday.
“Accordingly, the present board of trustees of Bai Hirabai, comprising individuals who are either non-practising or non-Zoroastrian, is not constituted in accordance with the trust deed and must be reconstituted strictly in compliance with its provisions,” Mistry added.
On Sunday, Tata Trusts said it plans to amend clauses that restrict eligibility for trustee positions at the Bai Hirabai Jamsetji Tata Navsari Charitable Institution to Zoroastrians.
The move follows Mistry’s challenge earlier this month to the eligibility of Tata Trusts’ two vice chairmen—TVS Motor Company chairman emeritus Venu Srinivasan and retired defence secretary Vijay Singh—as trustees of the Bai Hirabai trust, triggering the current dispute.
A day before Mistry filed his affidavit before the Maharashtra Charity Commissioner, Tata Trusts chief executive officer (CEO) Siddharth Sharma briefed Singh and Srinivasan on the eligibility criteria after a review of the original trust deed. After discussions with chairman Noel Tata, Sharma asked both whether they would be willing to step down voluntarily to avoid a potential dispute.
Srinivasan resigned, but Singh did not.
Both, however, accused Sharma of bias, stating that while he asked them to step down, he did not share a 26-year-old legal opinion that rebutted the eligibility condition.
Tata Trusts maintains that, since 2000, non-Zoroastrians have served as trustees of the Bai Hirabai Jamsetji Tata Navsari Charitable Institution, based on a legal opinion from former Chief Justice of India MH Kania. The two trustees argued that Sharma concealed the details of this opinion.
Sharma, in his defence, said that he and Noel Tata believed the legal opinion, which supports the continuance of Srinivasan and Singh on the Bai Hirabai trust, did not substitute for a court order.
Bai Hirabai Jamsetji Tata Navsari Charitable Institution is run by Sir Ratan Tata Trust (SRTT). Sir Dorabji Tata Trust (SDTT) and SRTT hold 27.98% and 23.56%, respectively, in Tata Sons, the holding company of the Tata Group. Along with this 51.54% stake, six other trusts own 14.36%, taking the combined holding of the philanthropic entities to 65.9%.
Mistry is currently a trustee at Tata Education and Development Trust, a smaller trust run by Sir Ratan Tata Trust.
In addition to challenging trustee eligibility at the Bai Hirabai trust, Mistry last week filed an affidavit contesting his removal from Sir Dorabji Tata Trust, the largest among the Tata Trusts, and sought the appointment of an administrator to run the philanthropic entities.
Mistry's filing argues that the SDTT board has engaged in a pattern of misconduct serious enough to warrant such an appointment. The violations he lists include acting through an illegally composed board, repeatedly breaching the new trustee tenure law, selectively applying resolutions that suited individual trustees while discarding others, counting votes from a person who had already ceased to be a trustee, and allowing at least one trustee to personally accept commissions from Tata group entities.