BLACKMAIL ANTICS OF NOSHIR DADRAWALA

The community, to the best of my knowledge, for the first time witnessed a “FARCE” of a “FAST” by a sitting trustee, Noshir Dadrawala, who had only a few days earlier announced to the world that he had resigned! Despite this so-called resignation, he promptly settled down in the very Boardroom from which he is alleged to have resigned to commence his “fast” in air-conditioned comfort in the full glare of the media! And gallons of water being consumed every few hours with a Doctor in attendance to give them vitamin shots when required. I repeat what a “FARCE OF A FAST”. Once again he withdrew his resignation within a few days of its submission.

And what did he achieve? The very assurance given by him and accepted by all present, of reducing the terms of trustees to a maximum of two terms of five years each, before the undersigned and several others earlier that week on October 12, 2021. Was this a sincere assurance?

I doubt it now from what I and others witnessed later that week: A fullfledged preparation with placards and media promotions of the grand event. The scene resembled the Premiere of a Hindi movie with stars and their loyal fans in attendance replete with Photo- Ops! To my mind, the person/s on “Fast” actually pulled a fast one on the community! After this “Tamasha” one can anticipate many more such “Tamashas” with all those who have a grievance with or within the Trust and the Trustees.

To prove my point I urge readers and the community to read the interviews of some of the then newly elected Trustees especially that of the owner of PT and his co-panelist of the 2015 election, conducted by the then Editor of Parsi Times Ms. Freyan Bhathena in the issue of November 14, 2015.

 It is important that decisions are taken after persuasion, discussion, and deliberations and not by such threats. Decisions arrived at under such threats are not rational and sustainable and will come to haunt us over a period of time!

It is to the credit of Armaity Tirandaz, Viraf Mehta and Xerxes Dastur that out of concern for his health and well-being they visited him more than once during this fast but actually fell for the Blackmail tactics adopted by him and agreed to give up more than a year for Armaity Tirandaz to over three years for Xerxes Dastur of their term just to avoid any health issues affecting him.

Phiroze Amroliwalla

GIVEN BELOW IS THE EXCERPTS OF THE INTERVIEW OF KERSI RANDERIA PUBLISHED IN HIS OWN

PAPER’S ISSUE OF 14-11-2015 on pages 3 -4.

PT: This is your third week as a BPP Trustee. How do you think the meetings are going?

Kersi Randeria: Well, we have had a great three weeks. We have been off to a flying start. Some of the issues we were talking about when Noshir, Zarir and I were campaigning have gotten off the ground already.

This Friday, the 13th of November, the Trustees meet for Electoral Reforms. (This interview was conducted before that due to the Diwali holiday.)

PT: You guys have set up committees and sub committees… which ones are you personally excited to focus your energy on?

Kersi Randeria: All of them! I am excited about the Heritage TDR Committee because that was my proposal during the Elections. PT:

The Board is talking seriously now about working on all issues related to the Election process. Shed some light on that please. Kersi Randeria: We have created a Committee to work on all issues related to Election and the Committee meets this Friday.

People who have duplicate certificates, people who may have passed away and their certificates have not been cancelled etc. This is a challenging task but will have to be done to make the electoral list actually representative of the people who are eligible to vote.

We also are working on amendments to the Scheme of Elections which will include issues like reducing the term of Trustees from 7 years to 5 years, reducing the number of times the trustee can stand for Elections from the current 3 terms to 2 terms, plugging all the areas of concern that were very obvious during the last 6 months before the elections.

PT: Cawas Panthaki at the helm as CEO and Aspi Sarkari as the Deputy CEO. What do you see as their roles? Are you happy with the team and the staff?

Kersi Randeria: The new Board spent the first Tuesday Meeting, meeting each and every member of the staff to try and interact with them and to motivate them to work with the speed and spirit that the new Board proposes to work with. A lot of emphasis was laid on the need for better Public Relations and a more positive attitude of the staff members with members of the Community who come to the Trust. This will improve the image of the Trust.

PT: Tell us about the effort being made to clear unnecessary legal backlogs.

Kersi Randeria: Within the next two weeks we intent to put up a public notice inviting members of the Community to come and meet the BPP Trustees and speak about the legal cases that they are involved in with the Trust. We propose to give each person will be given a 15 minute slot for the first meeting, in which a preliminary assessment will be done about the legal case. A genuine effort is going to be made by the Trustees to reduce the pending number of cases which today stand around 250, by either withdrawing or finding grounds of settlement between the Trustees and those against whom the cases have been filed.

We are hopeful that even if we can reduce this number by 50% we would have done what we promised to do in our campaigning.