A Tata Trusts meeting is scheduled for this Friday amid long-drawn turmoil in the organisation. Since Sir Ratan Tata Trust (SRTT) — one of the two main entities of Tata Trusts —remains frozen, this will be a meeting only for the trustees of Sir Dorabji Tata Trust (SDTT) — the other core shareholder. Tata Trusts holds around 66 per cent stake in Tata Sons, which is the holding company of the salt-to-software conglomerate.
The SDTT meeting is coming up a week ahead of a Tata Sons board meeting on September 17. This will be the first Tata Sons board meeting after chairman N Chandrasekaran sent out a letter to the board members on August 12 that he would not offer himself for a third term.
In the letter, he pointed out that one board member had opposed his reappointment as chairman of Tata Sons and that for six months the matter had been on hold. Chandrasekaran’s second term as Tata Sons chairman is till February 20, 2027.
The SDTT trustees had last met the day after Chandrasekaran’s surprise announcement and passed a resolution to set up a selection committee for a new chairman at Tata Sons. There hasn’t been any movement on that front yet.
Under the Tata Sons Articles of Association (AoA), SRTT and SDTT have to jointly nominate three members to the five-member selection committee. Since the Maharashtra Charity Commissioner froze meetings and decision-making powers of SRTT earlier this year over alleged violations linked to perpetual trustees, joint nomination for the selection committee could not take place.
According to sources, the agenda for the Friday SDTT meeting is broadly routine related to approval of projects and programmes. The Tata Sons leadership issue is unlikely to come up, it is learnt.
The freeze on SRTT had also impacted the annual general meeting (AGM) of Tata Sons last month, for the first time in its century-old history. Subsequently, the Registrar of Companies (RoC) under the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, granted a three-month extension till end of this year to Tata Sons for holding the AGM. According to Tata Sons AoA, the AGM has to have a representative jointly nominated by both SDTT and SRTT.
