This is an open letter sent to the Jame Jamshed by Arzan J. Ghadially. It is reproduced here with permission from the author.
Week after week Jame has once again started dishing out weekly soap’s in their weekly and are using weak minded people / groups to fight their battle in the guise of helping the poor. The Parsee community had shown the losers the door in the last elections and a new elected body was voted to power. Since these losers have exhausted all resources now, they are left with no supporters except for the illegal occupants of the Bhabha Sanitorium. Now Jame and AZA are exploiting these people to fight their personal agenda’s. Jame is a weekly and should maintain their standard of journalism and not use it settle personal scores at our expense as we are paying for it and is not freely distributed like WAPIZ does with Free Press.
A time will come when the community will stop patronizing and discourage such journalism of cheap thrills and discontinue the subscription. Every allegation is hear say and the weekly does not back up with documents of proof in many cases. The article ‘BPP’s ‘New Hosuing Ploicy’ was a piece of trash not worth printing and most certainly not written by the illegal occupants and even if it were I don’t think readers are interested to read such articles on a Sunday. There is no dignity left in the newspaper.
With reference to an article in Jame dated Feb8,2009 captioned ‘ More poor Parsees seek AZA’s support’ I feel the time has come to inform the community the truth and expose these people who do not even have the balls to write their name and have to hide under the guise of Team Jame . As readers we all have a right to know the panelists on Team Jame. Why is it being hidden? I speak as a one time beneficiary of this charitable service provided by the sanatorium which was once a peaceful place and people without any accommodation could stay for a period of 4 months and move to other sanatoriums namely the Petit at Kemps corner and the Juhu Sanitarium, this way all year round these poor Parsees with no accommodation would move from one sanatorium to another and were happy with the arrangement till these illegal occupants moved in and decided not to move out and thus disrupted the entire process depriving hundreds of families in the process. The very fact that these illegal occupants have not cast their votes for 15-20 years is proofs by it self that they are residing illegally. By their own admission they have admitted they have No Ration card, No Passport, No LPG connection, No Pan card and most important No Legal document to claim their rights over the property they are illegally occupying and hence according to law they are illegal till the courts decide their fate and till such time in the eyes of the law and the community they are illegal occupants and AZA can do nothing to help them except use them like they are using Jame .
If the BPP have appointed security guards it is to protect the property from such illegal occupants and status quo should remain till the verdict. Instead of approaching AZA they should approach the courts and air their grievances since the case is going on.They are using the wrong platform to fight and will eventually lose out. If the landlords wants to sell the property or do whatever they wish to they can do so as they the property belongs to them and legally they are not liable to take permission from illegal occupants on what they wish to do with the property. I do sympathize partially with the illegal occupants and strongly suggest that they should not get involved or be used by anyone. The matter is with the court and must await a decision and till such time discuss the issues with the Trustees to resolve the issues and live in peace and harmony. I am sure this suggestion will work and rest assured AZA could not influence the community and lost out on elections and AZA cannot influence the courts.
If AZA was the solution to our community problems they would have been elected by the community on the board of the BPP as Trustees by the community but in spite of the food packets and eminent people on the AZA board and power point presentations the Parsee community being educated and intelligent have made the choice and voted them out and we must respect the mandate of the people.
I would request AZA to strengthen the hands of the community and serve the people in a constructive way and stop using and influencing weak minded people and groups and instigate them for their personal gains and most certainly not by holding press conferences with National dailies and washing dirty linen in public. If this continues a time will come when we will have an outside administrator from the Charity Commissioner running the BPP. I strongly suggest AZA to give the new board time to work rather than them wasting time fighting your cases.
Thank you readers for your time and patience.
Arzan J Ghadially