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Informist, Wednesday, May 13, 2026

 

MUMBAI – The Bombay High Court Wednesday allowed a petitioner to withdraw his plea seeking an injunction against a meeting of the board of the Sir Ratan Tata Trust. The petitioner had sought the injunction citing discrepancies in appointments to the trust, which is a part of the Tata Trusts that hold majority stake in Tata Sons Pvt. Ltd., holding company of the Tata Group. The petitioner withdrew the petition after the court observed certain material inconsistencies in it.

 

The plea, which challenged the legality of the appointment of trustees to the Sir Ratan Tata Trust and sought an injunction on its meeting, came up before a vacation bench of the high court comprising Justice Advait Sethna and Justice Sandesh Patil. The bench observed that the petitioner, Suresh Tulsiram Patilkhede, had not been fair to the court by failing to disclose who the original complainant in related proceedings before the charity commissioner of Maharashtra was.

 

The petition claimed that the Sir Ratan Tata Trust's board of trustees was in contravention of Section 30A(2) of the Maharashtra Public Trusts Act, 1950. The provision caps the number of life trustees on the board of a trust to one quarter of the total number of trustees. The Sir Ratan Tata Trust currently has six trustees of whom three--Jimmy Naval Tata, Jehangir H.C. Jehangir, and Noel Naval Tata--serve as life trustees.

 

Patilkhede's petition stated that the cap on the number of life trustees was brought in by an amendment to the Maharashtra Public Trusts Act in September. Following this, he wrote in April to the board of the Sir Ratan Tata Trust and the charity commissioner but failed to get a response. He approached the court for an urgent injunction on a meeting of the trustees, scheduled for Friday, and for other relief after his letters failed to get a response from the trust or the charity commissioner, according to the petition.

 

The petition had sought a direction to the charity commissioner to ensure compliance with statutory provisions by the Sir Ratan Tata Trust. It had also sought a stay on the trust adopting any resolution during its meeting. The petition had further sought a declaration from the court that all decisions by the board since September were illegal.

 

On Thursday, the court had refused to grant an urgent hearing on Patilkhede's petition. Later, according to media reports, the trust's meeting was postponed to May 16.  End

 

Reported by Prateem Rohanekar

Edited by Saji George Titus and Rajeev Pai

 

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