Samvada News Bureau
The Extraordinary General Body Meeting of the Gulmohar Park Journalists Colony Welfare Association (GPJCWA) was held on Sunday, November 6, 2022 at the Gulmohar Centre to seek approval of members to about a dozen clauses in the Memorandum of Association (MoA). For the first time spouses of members were allowed as ‘observers only in a separate area’ but without voting rights. The venue did not, however, have a separate clearly marked demarcated area for the spouses resulting in lack of distinction between the voters at the time of voting.
The meeting began at 11.30 am after being deferred for 30 mts because of lack of quorum. The President of GPJCWA, Mr Atul Bal welcomed all members and informed that they had held an emergency Managing Committee meeting the previous night and decided to withdraw the proposed amendment regarding changing of the Registered Office of the Association, and giving the spouse member a discount of 33% in the membership subscription subject to the original member continuing to be a member and paying his subscription. He then requested all members who agreed with this change to raise their hand. Mr Bal then stood up to count the raised hands and declared that the majority was in favour and so all the other amendments were approved and that the meeting comes to an end. He thereafter got up from his seat and closed the meeting.
All members present were heard shouting that none of the clauses had been read out and voted for or against but the RWA President turned down all requests. The counting of votes by raised hands in itself is not viable as there was no demarcated area for voters and nonvoters. There was chaos and frustration among most of the members present who were not given an opportunity to utter even a word and termed the entire process undemocratic and unilateral. Some were overheard terming it as autocratic and despotic. Some others whom we spoke to said that none of the amendments can be implemented until the amended MoA is approved at another AGM and a stamped copy of the same received from the Registrar of Societies in token of their having taken it on record.
A few senior long-time residents of the colony drew a parallel between this meeting and the AGM held earlier this year. In the AGM also, they said, the Secretary’s Report for the financial year 2021-22 was not circulated or read out. The Annual Report and the Audited Accounts were also not distributed among the members at least one week in advance of the General Body meeting. The delay was sought to be condoned by a resolution to be voted upon at the AGM. Approval of a resolution in contravention of the MoA can, however, only be considered approved if the MoA is amended at an EGM within six months. The amendments brought before the EGM, however, only reiterated the earlier clause without adding a clause giving the General Body the authority to condone delay in distribution of Audited Accounts. This raises questions on the validity of the AGM.
The many members interviewed by our team felt that there was not even a semblance of any democratic process having been followed. They only hoped that the statutory process would be implemented.
57 members attended the meeting. A number of senior resident members were present to witness the proceedings, namely Mr. Yogendra Sahai, Mr.Subhash Saluja, Mr. Umesh Sehdev, Mr. Rajiv Bhala, Mr Yogesh Bhandari, Ms. Swati Prasad, Ms. Sugita Katyal, Mr. Manpreet Singh Chowdhary, Mr Ranganathan, Ms. Nirupama Verma were present at the meeting.
