The promised donation of one crore rupees to cover the cost of electronic voting machines (EVMs) with a paper trail (VVPAT) system has been honored by lawyer and community activist Berjis Desai. He made the commitment this April/May when the majority of Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) trustees told Bombay High Court Justices Shahrukh Kathawalla and Milind Jadhav the trust did not have the funds to rent the machines. EVMs are used in municipal, state and national elections in India and are considered an improvement over paper ballots. But former BPP chairman Dinshaw Mehta was not in favor of them and to avoid a stalemate the Justices left the choice of which mode to select to the trustees.
The Court had been hearing a petition brought by the two minority trustees and others to hold the BPP elections which Mehta and the majority trustees were delaying under one excuse or the other.
The donation will cover the existing liabilities of Rs 25 lakhs of the BPP for the elections held on May 29, 2022 while the interest from the remaining Rs 75 lakhs will be used to cover election expenses in future, stated the Parsi Junction (PJ) weekly of August 28, 2022. PJ also stated that Desai had written to the BPP that he "remains committed to making the said donation though he now agrees to the near unanimous view that EVM voting is not really suited for trustee elections, having regard to the nature of the electorate and other complexities.”
In 2006-8, Desai had been instrumental in ushering universal adult franchise for the BPP trusteeship elections but grew disillusioned with the system.
He had been a trusteeship candidate for the last elections when initially scheduled but, following the first postponement, he withdrew his candidature.
Top and above r: Berjis Desai with Cmde Aspi Marker (retd) (l)
Photos: Jasmine D. Driver; below: Rakesh Jhunjhunwala
"He was never a client… a personal friend for over 25 years,” senior lawyer and columnist Desai told Parsiana on September 7, 2022 about big-time stock market investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, who passed away on August 14, 2022. "He lived life on his own terms… and thoroughly enjoyed what he did till the very last minute.” The ace investor had "predicted an unbelievable bullish period for India in the next eight years,” stated Desai, who will be one of the executors of Jhunjhunwala’s estate. A report in The 
Economic Times (ET) of August 25 noted that Desai’s co-executors are Jhunjhunwala’s wife Rekha, her brother Rajeev Gupta and his nephew Vishal Gupta. The investor’s close friends Radhakishan Damani, founder of retail chain DMart, Kapraj Dharamshi and Amal Parikh have been made members of the committee that will oversee the investment decisions of the billionaire’s estate, noted ET.
Known to have entered the stock market in 1985 with Rs 5,000, news reports put the value of his holdings at about Rs 29,000 crores.