MUMBAI: In a finding it described as “inescapable”, the Bombay high court held that the nearly 150-year-old Breach Candy club in south Mumbai with a veritable who’s who of Mumbai as its members can be governed only by Europeans, still. The HC held that the present managing committee with Indians appointed at the helm “prima facie appears to be illegal” and disbanded it.

In an interim order, the HC removed from the managing committee the club’s present chairperson Dipesh Mehta and other managing committee members, including Vikram Malik, Lalit Agrawal, Jaenette Anand, Marion Panjwani and Benno Lueke. It directed four Europeans — Alon Mooleman, Giovanni Autunno, Gerry Shirley and Anya Lehra — to take charge.

The order, passed on October 29 by justice SC Gupte, was uploaded on Saturday on the court website and is considered a landmark by club members. It was passed on an application filed by Mooleman and the three others in 2014. The plea was to enforce an October 21, 2013 resolution passed by the club trustees at an extraordinary general meeting removing nine managing committee members headed by Mehta and appointing four Europeans instead. The HC held that the resolution was valid and legal.

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The club has been in a controversy since late 2013 following that EGM. The present committee had four days later held another EGM and suspended Mooleman and eight other trust members who participated in the previous meeting. The HC had stayed the suspension.

The appointment of Mehta and others was in violation of the club’s constitution of 1867 that permits only Europeans, who can be trustees, to be managing committee members, said Mooleman’s lawyers Shiraz Rustomjee and Archit Jayakar. The court agreed and after perusing the club’s constitution and records held that “one inescapable conclusion which flows from a collective reading of these provisions is that unless you are a European inhabitant of Bombay admitted as a trust member, you cannot be an Ordinary Trustee or in the management of the Trust. That is beyond a pale of doubt.” In 1967, the constitution was approved by the Mumbai city civil court, and up to 2010 it was being strictly followed, said Jayakar.

During the hearing, Mehta’s counsel JP Cama argued that even under the original constitution, there was no bar to Indians being appointed as trustees and he relied on an “amended constitution”, which he said made it clearer that such appointments are legally valid. Cama also argued that since the charity commissioner is the authority to consider the legality of the appointment of a trustee of a public interest and since the issue is already pending there, the HC has no jurisdiction to decide at this stage.