HC orders detachment of Govindu Naicker Trust

Appoints interim panel headed by ex-judge to administer it

The Madras High Court has ordered the detachment of the Govindu Naicker Trust, created through a will executed by landlord Arnary Govindu Naicker in 1846 for educational, religious and charitable purposes and permitted by him to be administered by the trustees of the Pachaiyappa’s Trust after his death.

A Division Bench of Justices Rajiv Shakdher and Abdul Quddhose appointed Chitra Venkataraman, a retired judge of the High Court, as the chairperson of an interim management committee to be constituted for administering the trust and gave her the liberty to appoint five members to the committee.

The orders were passed on an appeal preferred by Govindu Naicker’s descendant P. Elumalai and journalist M.P. Thirugnanam.

The appellants had challenged a single judge’s 2013 judgement, passed in a civil suit filed by them in 2001, refusing to detach the Govindu Naicker Trust and appoint trustees belonging to the Vanniyar community to manage it.

The Bench, led by Mr. Justice Shakdher, held that the single judge ought to have framed a separate scheme under Section 92 of the Code of Civil Procedure for management of the Govindu Naicker Trust when it was a proven fact that its properties had been mismanaged by some of the erstwhile trustees of the Pachaiyappa’s Trust.

Clarification on trustees

Authoring the judgment, Mr. Justice Quddhose said: “The will does not give any privilege for the Vanniyar community to become trustees of the Trust... The beneficiaries under the will of Govindu Naicker must be only people from the Hindu community at large and there is no special privilege given to Vanniyar community.”

Further, directing the trustees of Panchaiyappa’s Trust to submit true accounts, since 1990, the Bench held as invalid the action of Pachaiyapa’s Trust in having leased out a property belonging to Govindu Naicker Trust in Kancheepuram in 2015.