New trustees of Parsi Panchayat assume office

Seven new trustees of the Bombay Parsi Panchayat (BPP) assumed office on Thursday. They were elected through the first-ever universal adult franchise, results of which were declared on Tuesday.

Social worker Arnavaz Mistry got the maximum number of votes. Her 22 years of experience working for patients at the JJ Hospital, inmates of dharamshalas and Parsi students helped her in the polls.

A close friend and supporter of Mistry, Zarin Havewala explains how her low-budget campaigning managed to inform people about her work. “Arnavaz has revived the Parsi ward at JJ hospital. The ward was a neglected with just 20 beds. Today, it is bright, airy and has more than double the original number of beds,” she explains.

Dinshaw Mehta, who has already been a BPP trustee, has also been re-elected. Architect Jimmy Mistry  too has won the polls. “I want to make the BPP a transparent, process-oriented charity. It has deteriorated and now is the time for it to get back its good image. Introducing tech-savvy processes will be my priority,” said Mistry.

But many are still wary if the newly-elected trustees would be able to work in close coordination with each other considering that many of them were part of the mud-slinging to lure voters. Independent candidate Rustom Tirandaz believes all the new trustees are capable of working together. “The BPP’s character has already been assassinated and we want to change that,” he said. For the Parsi community, the new trustees mean a new set of people to handle the property of the BPP, which consists of 16 baugs in the city — accounting for about 5,000 tenements.

Zoroastrian scholar Khojeste Mistree, who will be in the team, said, “Many flats have been allotted in an unfair way. Our job is to undo that and make sure people with higher merit get the flats.”