Nagpur :- Ministry of corporate Affairs was forced to intervene and appoint an Administrator (senior Officer) at NVCC (Nag Vidarbha chamber of Commerce) to put a permanent end to Ashwin Mehadia’s self-proclaimed Presidency and a dictatorial behavior despite being ineligible to for the Presidents seat owning to his Director Identification Number being barred by the Registrar of The Companies.
In an exclusive interview given to News Today 24×7 special correspondent, Dipen Agrawal (Presently President of CAIT and past President of NVCC) shed light on the entire drama that was going on at NVCC which was staged and carried out by Ashwin Mehadia and his troupe members. The below mentioned story is an excerpt of the entire interview that was given by Dipen Agrawal.
Anand Mehadia was debarred from being a president owing to His Director Identification Number being barred for a period of almost five years (2016 -2021) by RoC. As a result of his DIN being revoked, legally he couldn’t be neither a Director of any company or NVCC nor was he eligible for the Presidency of NVCC, but which he otherwise chaired by cheating the members by concealing the fact that his DIN was revoked and he is legally debarred from functioning as a director of any company or even a director of NVCC. Not only this he even went the extent of making one sided policy decisions and chaired the meetings. He brazenly siphoned of crores of rupees in a land deal (owned by NVCC trust for decades) where he transferred about 40,00 sq. feet of land to someone for an amount which can be easily termed as a pittance. Mehadia then went ahead by furnishing fake documents like certificate of origin in which he again made several lakhs of rupees for himself. Furthermore, he also authorized involving a third party to issue certificates on Behalf of NVCC. In order to conceal his forged certificate of origin which had no approval by other dignitaries, he furnished fake evidences, fabricated documents and destroyed factual evidences to cover his fraud.
Last Annual general meeting was postponed by him without assigning any reasons (technically AGM’s cannot be postponed) and finally, when the AGM was convened, only 11 days of prior notice was served to the members against the mandatory 21 days (as per the clause in the Articles of Association of the Companies act.) which clearly points out Mehadia’s high handedness and carrying out things at NVCC as per his own whims and fancies. Owing to this dictatorial approach of Mehadia, the past Presidents and other renowned dignitaries of the NVCC (delegation of some 11 persons who understood their responsibilities and duties for the wellbeing of the Chamber) then wrote a letter to the secretary of the NVCC asking him to restore the tarnished glory of the chamber by pointing out the irregularities and the illegal acts that were being carried out under Mehadia’s Presidency of NVCC. To this Mehadia portraying his obstinacy instructed the secretary to not to pay any heed to the letter and that he doesn’t find himself bound to reply to the issues highlighted in the letter and disregarded the need to address or discuss the issues mentioned in the letter stating that he will see them in the court and answer the issues raised to him thru the court. His doggedness was reflected by him filing a caveat in the court thus sidelining his professional etiquettes of at least giving a reply to the letter in an amicable manner. He even threatened those who were raising such questions, by asking them to surrender their membership if they have any issues and problems with his way of working. In 2017 for occult reasons it was decided that even new membership will not be granted to people seeking NVCC membership as a result from 2017 till 2022 no new members were introduced in NVCC. To this Mehadia who was not even maintaining a membership register took advantage of the amnesty scheme (having no approval from the executives, members or in any Annual General Meet) by writing of 3-4 years of outstanding membership fee of his close and personal group of people and accepting only current years membership fee to renew the membership and along with these members he introduced new members too without even bothering to take an application for the membership. So blatant were the membership violations that 7-8 members of the same family were added under one members name under the garb of this amnesty stating these new entrants as previous members and thus gave membership to his pre-selected own persons. In furtherance to this Mehadia denied to accept the annual membership fee from almost 600 members by saying that the fee will be accepted on a later date, however the Articles of the Association states that the membership fee has to be paid 72 hours ahead of the Annual General Meet. This was a very clever and calculated way of keeping those members away that were not in his favor. This act of his doesn’t justify his presidency as a trade leader, because a trade leader is someone who works for the betterment of the trade, cares for the concerns and issues faced by the traders and works to ensure that each trader is benefitted, how ever contrary to this he hijacked the Presidents chair, defrauded the chamber, produced fake and fabricated documents and none of his acts can suggest or support him possessing the qualities of a good trade leader. The article of association states that all the members have a fair and equal right to express their thoughts and suggestions and speak out their views and the comments received from the members have to be mentioned in the minutes of the meeting. Also, that if a resolution has to be passed then it would be by majority and show of hands. But the high handedness of Mehadia never paid any heed towards the statute and did what he pleased so much so that he even disregarded the majority and approved a resolution that hardly had a few shows of hands.
It is important to highlight another of his misdoing of siphoning off the membership fee that was collected from more than 100 new members that amounted to some 35,000/- as cash deposited. when questions about the missing amount arose, a petty voucher for tea etc. was produced by him to justify his misappropriation.
Another worth mentioning scam that Mehadia attempted to call off, but got exposed and several members and the company were saved from getting defrauded was about Mehadia opening a clone company in the name of Nag Vidarbha Warehousing co. Pvt. Ltd. had impersonating as a company that Nitin Gadkari had proposed in an online meeting in order to beautify Nagpur city and provide 5-star business place with all amenities. Mehadia’s son was director of the company with Past president Bharatia running the clone company giving an impression to the non-suspecting public that the company was the outcome of the proposal made by Gadkari which was also made known to the public thru a press note. Nitin Gadkari wanted NVCC to take lead in promoting a separate market place for grain merchants etc. of Kirana Oli, Itwari keeping in mind how congested the market place was causing merchants and traders a lot of trouble. Since the DIN of Mehadia was debarred so his son took the director ship of this clone company, thus trying to impersonate as the company proposed by Gadkari which was supposed to take the lead in promoting and relocating the merchants to a better location to run their business smoothly.
All of the above acts and many others finally came into light and taking due cognizance of the violation of acts, irregularities and illegalities NCLT (National Company Law tribunal) bench took it very seriously and found it necessary to appoint an administrator to get the things into control and in order. The administrator will be making notes of the observations made by him, to be rectified and get NVCC running as per the systems requirement and statute.
