The High Court maintains jurisdiction over public trust matters, and EGM resolutions are valid without Charity Commissioner's prior approval; membership rights must comply with the club's original constitution.

JUDGMENT

G.S.PATEL, J. - A. BACKGROUND & LITIGATION HISTORY : This common order and judgment will dispose of a group of Appeals and their associated Notices of Motion. There are four Appeals before us:

(i) Appeal No. 158 of 2017, where the Appellant is now only one Dipesh Mehta (there were originally three others, but they have withdrawn from the Appeal and accepted the impugned order) is against an interim order (SC Gupte J) dtd. 29/10/2015 in a Notice of Motion in Suit No 573 of 2014;

(ii) Appeal No. 347 of 2016 by one Lalit Agarwal against the same order of Gupte J in a Notice of Motion in Suit No. 573 of 2014.

(iii) Appeal No. 323 of 2014 is by Dipesh Mehta against an order of 7/5/2014 (Mrs Rs. Dalvi J) in a Notice of Motion in Suit No 573 of 2014.

(iv) Appeal No. 324 of 2014, again by Dipesh Mehta (and originally others) also against the order of 7/5/2014 in a Notice of Motion in Suit No 111 of 2014.

2. The litigation history is complex. It has gone through many twists and turns over the last seven years. The litigation has also taken an unconscionable amount of the Court's time given the narrow nature of the controversy before us.

3. What we are concerned with is an elite membership Club in South Mumbai. This is the Breach Candy Swimming Bath. It is operated by the Breach Candy Swimming Bath Trust, a public charitable Trust registered under the Provisions of Maharashtra Public Trust Act 1950 (" MPT Act "). As we shall presently see, though the Trust is registered under the MPT Act , there is also a constitution and, perhaps unlike many other public charitable trusts, there is a governance according to this constitution. That governance includes a definition of various types or classes or categories of membership, provision for elections to the management, etc. The Trust is not also registered as a society under the Societies REGISTRATION ACT 1860. Even so, there is this constitution that controls day-to-day management, operations and control of the Club itself.

4. First, about the Club itself. On 1/3/2015, shortly after this litigation commenced, there appeared in the English literary magazine, Granta, most illuminating article by Samanth Subramanian captioned, simply, 'Breach Candy'. It has an engaging introduction to the Club itself, and, in particular, the configuration of the main swimming pool for which it is well-known. There is in this article also quite an introduction to the litigation that was then afoot in this very Court before one of the learned Single Judges. For our purposes, as an overview of the Club, the following extract should be sufficiently descriptive (there are far more colourful passages in the article, but prudence demands we leave those out).

If you climb onto the diving platform of the pool at the Breach Candy Club, and if you turn your back to the ocean expiring upon the rocks a few yards away, you look up into Mumbai. Or perhaps Mumbai looks down upon you, from its skyscraping fastnesses, the buildings rising higher and higher, pressing down upon the low, easy profile of the club, crowding it into the sea. To the left is the egg-white hulk of the Breach Candy Hospital; to the right, an apartment complex of similar height, painted a cheerful blue. In the distance hovers Antilia, the twenty-seven-floor, billion-dollar home of India's richest man. Much closer - right across the road from the club, in fact - is the stillborn residence of a slightly poorer tycoon, a textile baron. For years now, it has been shrouded in green netting because, rumour has it, Antilia's owner was so affronted by the thought of another luxury mansion sharing the skyline that he stalled the permits it req