AITA Trust and Anil Khanna back in focus ahead of EGM

Forward of Sunday’s Extraordinary Basic Assembly (EGM) of the All India Tennis Affiliation (AITA), focus is again on the AITA Belief.

The Belief was established in September 2000 by the AITA for the “promotion and growth of tennis all through the nation”, and was additionally handed unique property rights with respect to the R.Okay. Khanna Tennis Stadium in Delhi.

Prima facie, it is a duplication of the AITA’s position and a shifting of obligations from an elected, not-for-profit physique to a parallel power-centre.

Just lately, the Belief was additionally seen as unaccountable when Justice (retd.) Gita Mittal, the Delhi Excessive Courtroom-appointed administrator of AITA, requested for monetary information solely to be informed that the Belief was autonomous and personal.

This alternate got here on the again of great allegations of Belief funds being transferred to people’ accounts and getting used for costly land offers. As of March 31, 2021, the Belief had an earnings value ₹3.57 crore.

However in a state of affairs the place the AITA president, secretary and treasurer routinely assume equal roles within the Belief, is it actually impartial?

Paperwork present how this battle performed out final yr when the Delhi Garden Tennis Affiliation (DLTA) accused the Belief of “appropriating leases over varied parts of the [R.K. Khanna] Stadium since 2006”.

The Stadium advanced homes practically a dozen non-public institutions, and papers present that they generate rents value tens of lakhs each month.

It was alleged that AITA and the erstwhile DLTA had entered into agreements in 2014 and 2017 to switch these leases to the Belief, and “such a fraud could possibly be performed as Mr. Anil Khanna was the chairman of AITA Belief, president of DLTA and president of AITA at the moment”.

DLTA claimed that these agreements had been terminated in January 2023 and the Belief had agreed to return near ₹40 crore.

However Anil Dhupar, the Belief’s secretary and likewise of the AITA then, refuted all costs and sought to determine the Belief’s possession to components of the Stadium. However the battle of curiosity was left unaddressed.

One other battle

In actual fact, that back-and-forth pointed to a different battle. Rohit Rajpal, who was one of many signatories to the letter in his capability as DLTA president, was additionally the treasurer of the Belief, along with his title prominently talked about in Dhupar’s reply.

Data additionally present that Rajpal, at the moment an AITA vice-president and Davis Cup captain, is part-director at an unlisted non-public firm named All India Tennis Affiliation (registered workplace on the R.Okay. Khanna Stadium) that has Anil Jain (the then president of AITA and the Belief) and Aditya Khanna (son of Anil Khanna) as different administrators.

The developments across the Belief additionally acquire significance now as a result of veteran administrator Anil Khanna, who is about to attend Sunday’s EGM as a consultant from Bihar, is known to nonetheless be a everlasting trustee regardless of holding no workplace within the AITA.

This has been attainable as a result of the Belief has 21 everlasting trustees out of 30, they usually can maintain workplace till they “die or voluntarily resign or are declared of unsound thoughts or are convicted of an offence involving ethical turpitude”.

Anil Khanna was a part of the primary record of trustees in 2000, and has been omnipresent since then, even signing the profit-and-loss assertion within the capability of chairman in November 2021.