Mumbai News: Senior Solicitor Berjis Desai Appointed Member Of National Commission For Minorities

Mumbai, March 7: City-based senior solicitor Berjis Desai has been appointed as a member of the National Commission for Minorities (NCM).

Distinguished academic and legal background

Desai is a first-class honours graduate of Elphinstone College, Mumbai, and holds a law degree from Government Law College, Mumbai, where he topped the University of Bombay in the LL.B. examination.

He later received the Rotary International Scholarship to pursue postgraduate studies in law at Cambridge University, U.K., where he secured a Starred First. He also stood first in the Solicitors’ Examination.

Focus on addressing pending complaints

Speaking about his plans at the NCM, Desai said his priority would be to examine complaints pending before the commission. “These are complaints from all minority groups; I do not look at myself as the sole representative of Parsi interests,” said Desai.

Call for updated report on minority status

Another item on the agenda, he said, is the creation of a body on the lines of the Justice Rajindar Sachar Committee to prepare a report on the social, economic and educational status of the Muslim community in India.

“The committee submitted its report in 2006. It has been 20 years since then. It is time to have a document to reveal the state of all minorities,” Desai said.

Four decades of legal practice

Desai has been practising transactional and dispute resolution law for the past 46 years. He was the managing partner and, from 2016, the senior partner of J. Sagar Associates (JSA), a national law firm with more than 400 lawyers, before retiring in 2017.

He now works as an independent legal counsel specialising in succession and estate planning for high-net-worth individuals and promoter families through wills, trusts, mediation, arbitration, insolvency and asset reconstruction advisory. He also serves as a director on the boards of several listed and unlisted companies.

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Author and trustee in parsi institutions

Apart from his legal career, Desai has authored five books and writes a column on Parsi affairs in a leading Gujarati newspaper. He also serves as a trustee of the Wadiaji Atash Behram at Princess Street and the Dana Patel Boyce Agiary at Tardeo.

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