‘There is nothing uglier than an unrighteous and foolish majority’ – Mehmet Murat ildan, Author of the two-act play, ‘Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’.

About two and a half months ago, BPP Trustee Kersi Randeria had requested all his colleague trustees to give a thought to and plan for the elections to fill the vacancy caused by the unfortunate and untimely demise of Zarir Bhathena. The Board did not heed his requests.

With hardly any time left, trustees Kersi Randeria and Noshir Dadrawala, despite their refusal to attend any more Zoom meetings, joined the Zoom meeting on Monday, 21^st December, 2020, just to ensure compliance with the extended deadline granted by the H’ble Bombay High Court.

Trustee Kersi Randeria presented before the Board, a schedule for the elections, following exactly the schedule that was followed for the last elections. It was proposed that the announcement be made over this weekend in the Parsi publications.

While no flaws could be found in the schedule, Trustee Viraf Mehta, at the Zoom meeting held on the December 21, insisted, based on a rumour, that there may be another vacancy and therefore, the schedule should not be published or made public.

It was pointed out to him, that whether there be one vacancy or more, the schedule would remain the same. It was also pointed out to him that the Trust cannot plan its work based on rumours!

It was further pointed out to him that following the schedule of the last election, due to the unfortunate resistance of the three trustees not in compliance with announcing the elections earlier, the community was left with less than two weeks to fill up the forms and register themselves on the election roll. Delaying the announcement any further would leave the community with less than even a week to enrol!

The appeals of Trustees Dadrawala and Randeria to make the announcement, were rejected by Trustee Viraf Mehta, based on his obscure reasoning that ‘the BPP would look foolish’. Based on a rumour he had heard, Viraf believed there could be the possibility of another seat up for elections, and making an announcement of one seat, for the time being, would somehow make the BPP ‘look foolish’, though another announcement could easily have been made in a subsequent meeting! And thus, Trustee Viraf stuck to his guns, based on a rumour or a perception, as opposed to going ahead with current facts, so BPP would not look foolish!!!

Finally, when pushed into a corner, ‘Acting’ Chairperson Armaity Tirandaz suggested that they could discuss and decide this over another Zoom meeting on Wednesday, 23^rd December, in keeping with Viraf Mehta’s non-stop badgering. Having failed to convince his colleagues, Viraf now started claiming that he would not be available even for this brief call on Wednesday, suggested by Tirandaz! (Interestingly, on Wednesday, this claim was made to look ridiculous, as through the day, Viraf was in touch with other Trustees and on the phone with the BPP Administration!)

Finally, when all his ludicrous excuses were countered, his final argument was that we should postpone the announcement by a week because of COVID!!!

Truth is – Viraf was simply unwilling to have the schedule published, for reasons best known to him. In which case, the least that the other two trustees – Tirandaz and Dastur – needed to do, was simply cast their respective votes, particularly as this was only Viraf’s singular, individual view.

At such a point in time, when it was a 1-against-2, with Viraf’s baseless preference against the better judgment of the other two Trustees (Randeria and Dadrawala), in an even more absurd show, highlighting an abysmal lack of individual thinking and sincere governance, Trustees Tirandaz and Dastur refused to speak a word!

They couldn’t garner a simple ‘Yes’ or ‘No’, knowing full well that Kersi Randeria did have a substantial point and was only asking for what needed to be rightfully done, as Trustees. But fearing that conceding to Randeria and Noshir would antagonize Viraf, it was impossible to get a peep out of Trustees Armaity and Xerxes, who did not voice their views and chose to keep quiet, despite being repeatedly asked to speak up.

In the meanwhile, Chairman Yazdi Desai’s resignation letter arrived on Wednesday morning and the need to accept his resignation became even more important.

The meeting on Wednesday (23^rd) evening would have ensured that the Trustees complied with the Scheme of Elections and held an urgent meeting; And also, the announcement for two seats up for elections, would go out over the weekend.

However, at the scheduled time of the meeting, Trustee Armaity Tirandaz had switched off her phone and so had Viraf!!! Trustee Xerxes said that since Mrs. Tirandaz and Viraf are unable to join, he too would not join!!!

Therefore, Trustees Kersi Randeria and Noshir Dadrawala requested that all trustees could join a short 5 to 10 minutes Zoom meeting at 9:00 pm.

However, once again, none of the three Trustees – Armaity Tirandaz, Viraf Mehta or Xerxes Dastur – made themselves available! Viraf and Armaity Tirandaz once again switched off their phones and Xerxes did not answer calls from the BPP Administration, to request him to join!!!

It is indeed unfortunate, that while all three trustees had the time to talk to each other and certain other members of the community, they did not have even 10 minutes to spare for an urgent meeting to accept the resignation and to approve the publication of the Election Schedule.

Viraf Mehta was ready to hold discussions at meeting only on Saturday, by which time the deadline to publish the schedule in Parsi Times would be missed.

It is sad to see trustees put good governance on the back burner and indulge in power politics, abusing the majority vote of 3:2, at the cost of the welfare of the community, which elected them to safeguard their interests in the first place! There is, indeed, nothing uglier or more dangerous than an unrighteous and foolish majority, which recklessly holds to ransom the welfare of its community.