The Sir Dorabji Tata Trust (SDTT) has thrown its weight behind Noel Tata amid a rift with fellow trustees Venu Srinivasan and Vijay Singh over the proposed restructuring of Tata Sons and issues related to a potential listing of the holding company.
Srinivasan and Singh have filed complaints with the Charity Commissioner of Maharashtra (CCM) and raised concerns over the restructuring proposal following the Reserve Bank of India’s September 11 decision to retain Tata Sons in the upper-layer non-banking financial company (NBFC) category.
“Your letter suggests that the RBI’s communication has overtaken the decisions of 2025. It has not,” Noel Tata, his son Neville Tata, and fellow trustees Darius Khambata and Bhaskar Bhat wrote to Singh and Srinivasan in a letter dated Sunday.
“The communication declined Tata Sons’ application to surrender its registration. It does not mention listing, prescribe any particular step, or state that Tata Sons is in breach of any requirement. What it does is make it urgent to find a lawful course, other than listing, by which the settled objective of the Trusts and of Tata Sons can be achieved,” the letter said.
On September 28, the Tata Trusts proposed the merger of Tata Consulting Engineers and Tata Electronics Systems Solutions Pvt Ltd with Tata Sons, a move aimed at keeping the holding company private and avoiding a public listing.
Srinivasan and Singh had argued that it was inappropriate for Tata Trusts to ask the Tata Sons board to consider and approve the proposal. SDTT, however, disputed this contention. “The views of the shareholders (Tata Trusts), who hold about 66 per cent of Tata Sons, do not constitute an intrusion into the board’s decision-making process,” they said.
The SDTT has also rejected allegation that merger proposal mooted by Tata Trusts puts its charitable status at risk.
Further, the trust accused Srinivasan and Singh of adopting contradictory positions. In their letter, the two trustees had claimed that they were kept in the dark about the restructuring proposal and argued that the Trust should act only after deliberations in formal meetings.
In response, SDTT said: “Your letter, which insists on collective deliberation, does not mention that you had already asked the regulator (CCM) to prevent the trustees from meeting at all.” The trust said this stance was inconsistent with their stated demand for greater consultation and collective decision-making.
Published on October 6, 2026
