Gavaskar’s locker — Pressure on Gym to come clean

MUMBAI, JUNE 28: Pressure is mounting on the Bombay Gymkhana Club to come clean on the mess created by Sunil Gavaskar's locker with member...

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MUMBAI, JUNE 28: Pressure is mounting on the Bombay Gymkhana Club to come clean on the mess created by Sunil Gavaskar’s locker with members of the club — some of corporate Mumbai’s biggest names — for the first time coming out openly against the managing committee of the club.

On the eve of the crucial meeting of the managing committee where the issue of the resignation of president Gautam Thakkar is scheduled to be discussed, a group of about 25 members met at the Palms restaurant in the club’s premises to demand answers to questions that have been hanging thick over the club since this paper reported the discovery of huge sums of money in Gavaskar’s locker in the men’s room.

At the impromptu meeting speakers vehemently demanded the resignation of Thakkar — a friend of Gavaskar’s — for lack of transperancy in handling the issue but many members feel the entire managing committee of 18 should step down for conveniently turning a blind eye to the problem till the time that the story was broken.

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Though the managing committee is now woefully divided into pro- and anti-Thakkar lobbies, the average member of the club is clearly miffed with the way the managing committee handled the situation to the detriment of the club’s reputation. Members are furious that not only was Gavaskar allowed to operate an unlisted and unmarked locker but he was also not paying for the same. They want to know who was the premises secretary and president of the club when Gavaskar was given the unmarked locker and who waived the fee — Rs 50 per year till some time ago, now hiked to Rs 600. (Only after the locker was opened was it known that the locker belonged to Gavaskar because there were contract papers bearing his name and signature.)

Members have also been exercised over the fact that though the management put out a general circular in January advising them to use the lockers only for gym purposes — a suggestion that more than one member knew of the locker episode even at that time — it did not deem it necessary to inform the members.

With all this, Wednesday’s meeting will be keenly watched because Thakkar was given an ultimatum by some managing committee members to step down before the meeting. Many believe that Thakkar will not be too eager to oblige because there is enough evidence to prove that at least a few more committee members knew of the incident right from the beginning. Also, the managing committee has itself got to answer one very inconvenient question: Even assuming that most of the members did not know about the incident, why did the committee not haul the president over the coals on June 2 when, following the first report in this paper, an emergency meeting was called and the issue discussed threadbare? Why did they have to wait another three full weeks before they discovered their conscience?

Members also think that chief executive officer and secretary of the club, Col (retd) A Nagi, who was asked by the managing committee to put in his papers, was being made a scapegoat. The Colonel, it is learnt, has refused to be drawn into the faction fights and has taken the stand that he was just an employee and was following orders and that he had done his job of keeping his bosses informed every step of the way.