By OUR STAFF REPORTER
DEHRADUN, 22 Jun: Leading Chartered Accountant Pradeep Dutta, a member of the Doon Club for long, has alleged mismanagement of affairs by its Managing Committee. In fact, a police complaint in this regard was filed on 20 June at Dalanwala Police Station.
It may be recalled that elections to the new Managing Committee of the Club, as always, are due this month and have been declared to be held through electronic voting from 23 to 28 June by the Committee.
However, the allegations are that the elections are being held in an illegal manner as several records are missing from the Club including the membership register, the index and the Minutes Book of the meetings, etc.
The fact is that these allegations have been doing the rounds for a long time now and a case in this regard has been filed in the Uttarakhand High Court also. The Court had, in fact, appointed Justice MM Ghildiyal as arbitrator to go into the complaints and allegations of violations against the past and the present directors of the club vide Court order dated 2, November, 2019. However, Justice MM Ghildiyal allegedly failed to submit his report to the court and, instead, chose to resign as arbitrator. According to Dutta, the High Court has been approached again with a request to appoint another arbitrator in Justice Ghildiyal’s place. Dutta claimed that this case was likely to come up for hearing any day now!
The allegations further include that the board meeting minutes calling for an AGM on 29 June were signed by Club Secretary Ashok Ahuja, who as per the allegations is an irregularly appointed Secretary and, therefore, the AGM ought to have been called by a director as mandated under the Companies Act and that too with proper 21 days’ notice!
Meanwhile, another case seeking the cancellation of ‘illegal elections’ being held and regarding allegations of two AGMs instead of one having been called was to come up for hearing today but will now be heard on 26 June in a local court in Dehradun. According to Dutta, not only this, an inquiry into allegations regarding violations of provisions of the Companies Act is also underway against the managing committee by the Registrar of Companies Office, Rajpur Road, Dehradun.
Responding to the allegations, the outgoing Club President, DS Mann, claimed that these were unfounded and baseless. He also said he would not like to make comments as the matter was still sub-judice and would rather wait for the Courts to decide the matter!
