On the grounds that one of its constituents, Sir Ratan Tata Trust (SRTT), is in violation of a September 2025 amendment to the laws governing trusts based in Maharashtra, a writ petition filed before the Bombay High Court on Wednesday requests the cancellation of an important meeting of Tata Trusts scheduled for Friday. It has further stated that all decisions made after September 1, 2025, need to be declared void for the same reasons.
Suresh Tulsiram Patilkhede filed the writ case under Article 226 of the Constitution, claiming that the trust's present board composition violates statutory restrictions established by the Maharashtra Public Trust (Second Amendment) Act, 2025.

A crucial meeting of the Trusts, which has consequences for the governance of Tata Sons, which in turn controls India's largest corporate empire, would have to be postponed if the court granted the petitioner a speedy hearing and relief.
Representation on the Board
The Trusts' participation on the Tata Sons board is one item on the day's agenda. Noel Tata, the chairman of Tata Trusts, and Venu Srinivasan, the vice chairman, are currently trust nominees on the Tata Sons board.
SRTT owns 23.56% of Tata Sons. Tata Trusts control 66% of the total.A new section, 30A(2), was added to the trust laws by the Maharashtra Public Trusts (Amendment) Ordinance, 2025. If the deed is silent on the subject or makes no mention of it, the number of perpetual trustees is limited to one-fourth of the total strength of the trust.
The new regulation, which went into effect on September 1st of last year, mandates that current trusts always retain the cap.
The suit claims that SRTT currently has six trustees, three of whom are life trustees: Jimmy Naval Tata, Jehangir HC Jehangir, and Noel Naval Tata. This exceeds the statutory cap of 25% and makes up 50% of the board.

The trust would have to increase its board of trustees to twelve in order to accommodate three life trustees under the norm. Only one life trustee can be accommodated at six trustees. The longest-serving life trustee is Jimmy Tata, who was appointed in 1989 and is the brother of the late company patriarch Ratan Tata.
A life trusteeship shields a trustee from the whims of trust politics and eliminates the requirement that they be re-elected on a regular basis. Conversely, a tenured trustee depends on other trustees to be reelected and does not have a permanent voice in the trust's operations.The State of Maharashtra, the Charity Commissioner, SRTT, and trustees Noel Tata, Venu Srinivasan, Vijay Singh, Jimmy N Tata, Jehangir HC Jehangir, and Darius Khambata are listed as respondent parties in the petition.
In order to prevent the respondent trust and trustees from holding the planned board meeting on May 8 and from passing any resolution with the current board of trustees constitution until the board of trustees is reconstituted in compliance with the Act's provisions, the petition asks the court to intervene and issue an ex parte interim injunction.

Additionally, the petition has attempted to establish that any action performed by the current board after September 1, 2025, is void ab initio (from the beginning) and subject to being set aside, breaches Section 30A(2) of the Act, and represents a continuing illegality and breach of fiduciary duty.
Petitioner Patilkhede is a director on the boards of Elegant Realty and Mining Pvt Ltd and EPK Infrastructures Pvt Ltd, according to information that is publicly accessible. He is a resident of Thane who ran in the 2024 Maharashtra elections from the Kopri-Pachpakhadi assembly constituency, which is presently held by Eknath Shinde, the deputy chief minister. According to his electoral papers, he works as a farmer.

Any citizen may file a lawsuit against the state or its agencies in high courts under Article 226. The public might assert locus standi in the matters pertaining to the huge Tata trusts since they are public trusts with the public as their beneficiaries.
In addition to the Tata Sons board representation, the Friday Trusts meeting's agenda includes a discussion of the remarks made to the media by the two vice chairmen, Venu Srinivasan and Vijay Singh, in favour of listing Tata Sons, as well as a discussion of advocate Katyayini Agarwal's complaint to the Charity Commissioner regarding perpetual trustees, which made the same arguments as the writ petition currently filed in Bombay High Court.

The removal of Vijay Singh as a trust nominee on the Tata Sons board and the decision not to reappoint Mehli Mistry as a trustee are two significant decisions made after September 1st of last year.