[Letter to Girish Munshi]

Summary

This three-page document is a covering letter and an arbitral award, both dated April 29, 1977, in which Minoo R. Masani resolves an internal dispute inside the Maharashtra Swatantra Party. The one-page letter, addressed ‘My dear Girish’ (Girish Munshi), tells the recipient that after meetings on April 14 and 23 and a written exchange between Parmanand Kejriwal and Munshi on one side and K. H. Subramanian, L. R. Sampat and S. V. Raju on the other, Masani has produced the enclosed award and is copying it to the other parties.

The award itself concerns whether the tenancy rights at 143 Mahatma Gandhi Road, Bombay, and the assets listed with the award are held by the office bearers of the Maharashtra Swatantra Party in trust for the furtherance of the objects and principles of the Swatantra Party as set out in the Statement of Principles adopted at the Party’s preparatory Convention in Bombay on August 1 and 2, 1959. Having heard the parties, Masani rules that they are: the office bearers hold the tenancy and the annexed assets in trust for those Swatantra objects and principles, and from the date of the award are placed under an obligation to further those principles ‘and for no other objects or principles’.

Masani’s third and final direction requires the office bearers of the Swatantra Party to make and publish a suitable legal declaration of Trust covering the tenancy rights, the premises and the listed assets. The award is signed ‘M.R. Masani, Bombay, April 29, 1977’, and functions in effect as a mini constitutional lock — ensuring that whatever remained of the party’s Bombay infrastructure after Swatantra’s 1974 dissolution would continue to be held only for classical-liberal purposes tied to the 1959 founding document.

Key points

• A covering letter from M. R. Masani to Girish Munshi (April 29, 1977) transmits an arbitral award resolving an intra-party dispute in the Maharashtra Swatantra Party.
• The disputants are Parmanand Kejriwal and Girish Munshi on one side and K. H. Subramanian, L. R. Sampat and S. V. Raju on the other.
• The subject of the dispute is the tenancy rights at 143 Mahatma Gandhi Road, Bombay, and the party assets listed with the award.
• Masani, acting as arbitrator, awards that these rights and assets are held by the office bearers in trust for the Swatantra Party’s objects and principles as adopted at the Preparatory Convention in Bombay on August 1 and 2, 1959.
• The award places the office bearers under an ongoing obligation to further those specific Swatantra principles ‘and for no other objects or principles’.
• It directs the office bearers to make and publish a formal legal declaration of Trust covering the tenancy, the premises and the assets.
• The document is a concrete post-1974 artefact of how Swatantra’s residual Bombay infrastructure was fenced to a defined classical-liberal purpose rather than allowed to drift.
• Copies of the letter and award were sent to K. H. Subramanian, L. R. Sampat and S. V. Raju at the same 143 Mahatma Gandhi Road address.