Palazhi Ashok Kumar mumbai

In a swift development, the board of trustees of Tata Trusts on Tuesday inducted Neville Tata, son of Tata Trusts’ chairman Noel Tata, and Bhaskar Bhat to the board of Sir Dorabji Tata Trust as trustees with effect from November 12, 2025 for a period of three years, official sources at Tata Trusts said.

The board also appointed Venu Srinivasan as trustee for a period of three years with effect from November 12, in compliance with legal and regulatory requirements, and designated him as vice chairman of SDTT. The revised tenure of Venu Srinivasan, from a lifetime trustee to a tenure-term trustee comes after the Maharashtra government’s new rule that capped the number of lifetime trustees, a change that has impacted Tata Trusts’ long standing governance framework, official circles told The FPJ Money.

Bhaskar Bhat (71) was director on the boards of Titan Company and Rallis India. He holds a BTech in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Madras and a Postgraduate Diploma in Management from IIM Ahmedabad. He was honoured with the distinguished alumnus award by IIT Madras in 2018. As expected, the board, sources said, has reassessed the situation for compliance with the new regulations. The Maharashtra Public Trusts (Amendment) Ordinance, 2025, notified on September 1, limits perpetual trustees to one-fourth of a trust’s total board strength, according to the state government ordinance.

It may be recalled that the renewal of Venu Srinivasan’s life trusteeship (appointed as a perpetual trustee on October 20), and the ‘Big No voting’ by the majority of trustees to the reappointment of Mehli Mistry in October took place after the government’s ordinance’s effective date. The Maharashtra Public Trusts Act (XXIX of 1950) is enacted to regulate and make provisions for the administration of public, religious and charitable trusts in the state.

The state government’s ordinance (statement) said, “It is noticed that in various instruments of trusts there is no clarity about appointment of perpetual or permanent trustees and tenure trustees and their tenure, which leads to multiple litigations before the Charity Commissioner and the court. This affects the working of the trusts, welfare of beneficiaries and the public.”

It appears that the new regulations have impeded the implementation of a key resolution Tata Trusts had passed in October 2024, citing that trustees would be renewed for life at the end of their tenures. The new ordinance has created two classes of trustees, ‘lifetime trustees’ and ‘tenure-term trustees’. More precisely, trusts will have to be severely choosy about who gets to be lifetime trustees, and tenure-term trustees.