By Special Correspondent
New Delhi: A Delhi court has put a spoke in the Muslim Education Trust (MET) chairman’s wheel who ‘stealthily’ planned to sell the trust’s head office building of worth crores. In its order, Delhi’s Saket court has restrained the Trust chairman Amanullah Khan from selling the building or tampering with it in any form.
According to sources, when some trust members got inkling of the chairman’s plan, they approached the court which had issued a stay order against the sale of the building.
The MET building is situated at a prominent place in Abul Fazal Enclave, Jamia Nagar, Delhi.
The Trust is a voluntary educational NGO. It was established in 1989 to work for the betterment of the minorities giving top priority to education in its objectives. Since its inception, the MET has been on the march with absolute dedication to bring about a social and educational change in the present condition of the community by awarding scholarships to the needy students in pursuit of their higher professional education.
So far, more than 7,500 students have completed their education by receiving scholarships from the MET. 58% of the scholarships were given to engineering students, 40% to medical students and 2% to those studying in other courses.
However, the present chairman wanted to sell the building that seems to be now more interested in real estate business. When a news portal Asia Times put the lid off from the ongoing murky deal in July, the some trust members got alerted and they first approached the chairman to convince him not to betray the trust of the people but he did not agree. Afterward, they decided to approach the court which has now put a stay on any deal.
The trustees came out openly against the chairman. When Khan learnt of this development, he immediately convened the meeting of the trustees in order to convince them of the ‘advantage’ of selling the building. However, the trustees did not agree and all of them unanimously opposed the sale of the building and accused the chairman of tampering with the papers to hurt the trust.
The trust has also a vast piece of land with an area of 15000 square yards in Aligarh. They also asked to present him the ownership documents of this property.
It is learnt that the trustees tried to resolve the issue through mutual consultation with the chairman but failed. Since the chairman’s intentions were not good, the trustees have become increasingly concerned about the fate of the Aligarh property. They said this is “amanat” of the millat.
People are surprised by the action of the chairman in his twilight of life. Why did a person who has served the Millat for such a long time and provided scholarships to hundreds of students to pursue higher and professional courses, take such an ignominable decision. The question should also be asked of the trustees who have been working under the leadership of Amanullah Khan for a long time. The organization could have been saved from this mess if only a press conference had been held when the matter had gone out of hand.
This correspondent tried to contact the chairman to know his side of the story but his mobile phone was not available.
His comment will be added to this report if he respond to us.