The crucial Tata Trusts meeting scheduled for May 8 was postponed to May 16, at the eleventh hour. This is the second time the meeting has been rescheduled. It was earlier to take place on May 12, before it was advanced to May 8.
While the reason of the rescheduling is yet unknown, the Tata Trusts ecosystem is currently under immense scrutiny due to the ongoing conflict around governance within the Trusts.
Against this backdrop, the meeting was set to discuss key agenda points including the Trusts’ representation on the board of Tata Sons, potential listing of Tata Sons, and the issue of trustees in perpetuity at key trusts considering the recent amendment to the Maharashtra Public Trusts Act.
Internal Rifts
The question of listing Tata Sons has become a key fault line within Tata Trusts. Chairman Noel Tata is understood to favour retaining the holding company’s unlisted status, while trustees Venu Srinivasan and Vijay Singh have recently backed a public listing—seen by many as a shift from the board’s earlier unanimous stance against it.
The debate has sharpened amid evolving regulatory pressures. The Reserve Bank of India’s framework for upper-layer NBFCs, which includes a listing requirement, has limited Tata Sons’ room to manoeuvre. Although the company sought to exit its core investment company classification to avoid listing, recent regulatory clarifications—particularly around indirect access to public funds and tighter asset-based thresholds—have made such an outcome harder to secure.
Separately, Srinivasan’s position is under renewed scrutiny following governance tensions within the trusts, with his pro-listing remarks prompting questions over his continuation as a nominee director on the Tata Sons board. Vijay Singh’s renomination to the Tata Sons’ board was blocked by former trustee Mehli Mistry. Currently, Tata Trusts has two nominee directors on the Tata Sons board, one short of the designated three.
The issue of lifetime trustees has also received significant attention in recent times with Mistry mentioning it in his objection filed with the Charity Commissioner of Maharashtra, in addition to a representation sent by advocate Katyayani Agrawal of SV&Co to the same authority, both last month.
Legal Hurdle
More recently, earlier this week, Suresh Tulsiram Patilkhede, a resident of Khopoli in Maharashtra’s Raigad district filed a petition in the Bombay High Court, seeking a stay on the May 8 meeting. Patilkhede described himself as a person interested in the proper administration of the Sir Ratan Tata Trust (SRTT), a public trust governed by the Maharashtra Public Trusts Act, 1950.
The petition argued that SRTT was in violation of Section 30(A)(2) of the Maharashtra Public Trusts Act, which caps the number of trustees appointed for life or in perpetuity at 25% of the board’s strength. At present, SRTT has six trustees, three of whom are lifetime trustees — Jimmy N Tata (appointed in 1989), Jehangir H C Jehangir (2019) and Noel Tata (2019).
SRTT had filed a caveat before the high court following the communication sent to the Maharashtra charity commissioner by Agrawal in April.