The Delhi High Court on Wednesday not only refused to give Col. Jaiveer Singh any relief in his application seeking restraint on some elected members of the Equestrian Federation of India (EFI) Executive Committee but also heeded the plea of the respondents that he did not have the authorisation to file that plea and decided to consider that aspect before taking up the suit.
“At the outset, counsels for the defendants appearing on advance notice object to the maintainability of the present suit on the ground that Col. Jaiveer Singh is not authorised to institute the suit on behalf of the plaintiff. This aspect would have to be considered before issuing summons in the suit,” Justice Amit Bansal said in his order.
Back on March 27 this year, the EFI held its annual general meeting for the year 2021 and the Secretary-General, without prior notice and as part of his report rather than as a separate item of the agenda, proposed some amendments to the EFI Statutes based on the exemption letter from the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports.
There is reason to doubt if the amendments were passed at all. Not just because some members raised objections but also because the AGM Minutes 2021, available on the EFI website (screenshot below) does not mention anywhere that the amendments were approved by the house.
Be that as it may, some months later, when the heat was growing on him for his role in l’affaire Nepal, Col. Jaiveer Singh wrote to several elected Executive Committee members that either their terms in office had drawn to an end or the new EFI Statutes did not provide for their positions and hence ‘removed’ them from the Executive Committee.
When he wrote to elected members of the Executive Committee that their terms had ended, he did not realise that he left the Executive Committee with only three members. The EFI Statutes say that a quorum of seven is needed for decisions to be legally binding. So, every decision of his in the last couple of months is liable to be challenged and, perhaps, termed illegal.
However, on July 28, the members who were ‘removed’ from the Executive Committee hit back by getting together and suspending him from functioning as EFI Secretary-General for his anti-EFI and anti-Equestrian Sport activities. Among other things, the also wrote to EFI’s bankers asking for the account to be frozen until new authorised signatories were identified.
Challenging this, Col. Jaiveer Singh moved the High Court, seeking restraint on the nine elected members of the Executive Committee. When their lawyers pointed out that he was not authorised by the Executive Committee to file the plea, Justice Bansal decided that this aspect would have to be taken up. He will hear submissions on the maintainability on August 24.
