Forget the Iran War, forget the economy. This is the #1 topic of conversation among top lawyers in the country right now. I kid you not! People are wondering if top counsels like Sibal, AMS etc will appear pro bono and challenge this.

Meanwhile, here is a media interview of Supreme Advocate Riya Sachthey, who is a third generation member of the club. Her suggestion is that an alternative space can be created for third generation members like her. She is making the point that Mumbai and Kolkata have such clubs too.

https://x.com/ANI/status/2058214830851653993

Several clubs came up during the British Raj as exclusive watering holes for the British and then extended to Anglo Indians and Brit loving Anglicised natives. Some elites felt shorted and apparently became very nationalistic and set up their own networking zones. Posh plots got leased out or enlarged for a song. The governing philosophy as elite zones for the cognoscenti didn't change just because Independence happened.

How the "public" benefitted is extremely debatable other that tall tales.

Here is a nuggets from Kolkata. Two prominent (essentially golf) clubs are prime properties which belonged to erstwhile estate of Tipu Sultan when his family was exiled to Kolkata just like Nawab of Lucknow.

The earnings from the leases to the club is supposed to be used for the descendants and public welfare. Forget Tipu and his folks or how had/good he was etc.

Successive WB govts, the self proclaimed seculars ever concerned with minority welfare or their supposed communal opposition (and now the ruling party here) did absolute zilch when it came to following the money.

I request anyone interested to find out how much these two clubs as annual lease fees to the WB govt and the current bump. Then compare with the land value appreciation across all these years. Okay the last 50 years. Or just the last 15 years.

Do the same for other well known Kolkata clubs. Don't be surprised if you get similar numbers for Delhi or Mumbai.

The thing with clubs in Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai is that they give memberships to a broader cross section of society, plus corporate memberships. But Delhi Gym and Golf Club have been monopolised by the Congress ecosystem and memberships dominated by Congressi netas, babus, defence deal fixers, journalists etc. Corporate memberships generally not permitted. This is why the BJP people are pissed off and even many elite professionals (outside the Congress ecosystem) don’t like the club.

"The thing with clubs in Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai is that they give memberships to a broader cross section of society, plus corporate memberships."

No, they do not. 1 crore+ fee in many Mumbai clubs is certainly not accessible to "broader cross section of society"

I challenge you to get a membership at the Wellington Sports Club or the Bombay Gymkhana with any amount of money in 2026. These clubs are watering holes for those born with silver spoons. In Delhi NCR, the Delhi Golf Club and Delhi Gymkhana are out of bounds even for people who paid lakhs and applied in the 1980s. We Indians, frankly, deserve to be called pathetic, because members of these clubs use their access as a social filter. It’s disgusting. The irony is especially rich, considering that the British once had boards outside these very clubs banning entry to “dogs and Indians.”

Not the above commenter, but why will there be any jealousy over here? The person literally said, "these clubs are watering holes for those born with silver spoons." It ain't like any of them have achieved something to get in there right? And I don't think anyone shall be jealous of the lousy losers who do get the access and think that others are below them in any manner/ jealous of them. It's like network marketing people, all of them just extending recognition and respect within themselves on nothing but an iota of a person's sperm.

Read this article by Karan Thapar. It will give you the root cause of the tensions and why Modi wants to teach them a lesson. Karan Thapar has been consistently writing articles against the BJP since they entered the Delhi gymkhana management a few years ago. This is what he snootily writes, while discussing a club in Calcutta:

“I had been invited to talk to members of the Bengal Club. It’s a world apart from the Punjabi dhabas that Delhi’s clubs have been reduced to. Here, the British connection is fondly cherished, painstakingly maintained, and thoroughly enjoyed.”

This dig is directed at certain people from the BJP who entered the Delhi gymkhana management roughly during the Covid era.

https://www.hindustantimes.com/opinion/the-good-life-of-the-raj-in-a-calcutta-hotel-and-club-101725724069329-amp.html

Karan Thapar, in my humble opinion, is a tool and a useful fool for Pakistan and allied vested interests. His utterances of late prove it time and again. His clipped accent has lost currency in today’s India, and this is evidenced by the fact that he no longer asks tough questions or hosts those with whom he is ideologically at odds. I felt ashamed after the interview he conducted with Bilawal Bhutto Zardari. Stooge.

There is no club called the Kolkata Gymkhana. But there is a club on LI called the Dehaat Gymkhana: full of clueless shitposters.

Coming back to the comment made, it’s true that Bombay and Calcutta are “elitist”, but still more diverse in terms of professional backgrounds. Political and government officials (and their families) form a quite small minority of members. In Delhi, it’s the opposite. And that is the root of the problem. Waitlisted professionals like MBAs. CAs, lawyers, doctors etc were denied memberships once their turn came, while the green card system was doled out to political and bureaucratic families. Hence the legal challenges which ultimately culminated in this.

I believe Tolly in Kolkata used to pay Rs 100 or so for the entire year. And then monthly. This arrangement changed recently to Rs 1 lac a month or maybe annually. That too because of some litigation where Club got away easy. The club is sitting pretty over 127 acres and real estate sharks have been sakami slicing nearby areas. The Golf Club nearby has already suffered encroachments.

The mukut got replaced with topi. That's all. Bells and whistles morphed into varities that are less recognisable but normalised as protocol, tradition, convention and optics required for reasons of the state.

By the way do you know who minted tons of moolah when Lutyens went about building Delhi? The common ancestor of Khushwant S, Karan T, Valmiki T etc. Map out the blood lines. Interesting picture will emerge.

All these elite clubs have are on leased public land (which btw belongs to you and me as much as it belongs to a club member); and are paying far below market rate prices for the lease. Anything given below market rate should benefit the entire public. These gymkhanas should serve as sports centres for all the people rather than the rich (considering they are paying below market rate prices for the lease and have leased it for the "public" and the "good of the public", i.e., health).

If they still want to have exclusive places, then pay the market rate bitch

"The club sits on 27 acres of prime Lutyens' Delhi land, leased from the government at a nominal rent of Rs 1,000 a year. Yet inspections found that only a tiny fraction of its spending went towards sports, while substantial sums were allegedly spent on hospitality expenses, including "wines and cigarettes". Decades of waitlist, membership fees in lakhs that was collected without interest, and alleged family fiefdoms eventually prompted an intervention by the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT)."

Source: https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/delhi-gymkhana-takeover-bureaucrats-ias-ips-court-battle-delays-elections-nclat-supreme-court-7-lok-kalyan-marg-2905053-2026-05-23

"The tribunal observed that the club, "under the garb of distinctive character which is a relic of the Imperial past", was restricting membership to those "having blue blood in their veins thereby perpetuating apartheid and shattering the most cherished constitutional goal of securing social justice and equality of status and opportunity"."

Club pays yearly rent of Rs. 1000. Expectation is that they will use it to create sports facilities for people in the locality. However, till date it remains an exclusive club and the public objective of providing sports facilities to public at large (because of which it is getting the lease on a nominal rent) remains unfulfilled.

Hence this! Fully endorse this move!

Bang on. Probably also explains why the members preferred not using Sechthey as AoR and **** irony overload *** chose Trilegal instead to represent them (a firm that runs on the steam of associates and partners, many of whom will probably never get a Delhi Gymkhana membership in their lifetime, even if they paid the ₹20+ lakhs and waited) 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Dynasts zindabad!

That tracks. DRAMS is a supporter of Rahul Gandhi, after all !

It will take more than just a movement to dislodge these inept dynasts. Their tentacles are deeply entrenched in the system. People are either beholden to them or in awe of them. The exceptions merely prove the rule. This explains the latitude they enjoy, especially in the courts, and why some lawyers charge upwards of ₹18 to 20 lakhs per hearing, payable in advance, mind you, while others charge a few zeros less, payable only after a minimum 60-day delay, in tranches, and with at least a 30% discount, all of which you learn about only after the fact.

And if only the chamchagiri stopped there.

In a recent hearing before a certain court/tribunal, I watched a counsel with over 17 years of experience roll out the red carpet for a designated senior advocate, one who appears before that forum regularly, who needed an adjournment to fend off multiple provable perjury claims. This junior counsel did not even oppose the adjournment despite holding all the cards. In fact, they actively helped the opposing side and said, “last chance,” with a sheepish smile. That sort of generosity no doubt earns a pat on the back, and perhaps a future client referral from the senior.

The lesson? Our systems are deeply fucked, and Trump, for all his shortcomings, was not entirely off the mark when he described India as a “shithole” country. In many respects, it is. The evidence lies in the numbers. We are not only losing our brightest minds from NLS, the IITs, and the IIMs; people who can afford to live abroad are leaving in unprecedented numbers.

Ever wondered why someone like Virat Kohli might prefer living overseas rather than in one of his villas or apartments in India worth hundreds of crores?

That should tell you everything you need to know about India and about us Indians. The sharp and disproportionate class divide has little to do with Congress vs BJP “misrule”; it points instead to a deeper corruption in our values as Indians. We rape, pollute, shortchange, and kill our own in the name of class, caste, and religion. We feel no shame in using institutions like the Gymkhana, which, before Independence, banned “dogs and Indians” - to signal our social superiority over those without such memberships.

Which is especially rich considering these so-called clubs pay a pittance for land that would otherwise fetch several hundred crores in rent alone.

So, yes, I won’t miss the Gymkhana. I would, however, have preferred the DDA taking it over and running it like Siri Fort. But honestly, anything is better than the status quo at this point.

HT reports Sibal and AMS will represent, as speculated by LI. Shows LI gossip is #1.

https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/delhi-news/delhi-gymkhana-to-challenge-eviction-order-in-high-court-101779648321279.html

The Delhi Gymkhana Club has alleged that it was facing harassment at the hands of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) as it “resisted pressure” to give membership to Navrang Saini, a high-ranking official at the Ministry.

“Insofar as the complaint of Navrang Saini is concerned, it arises out of the Club having resisted pressure to give him membership. The Club verily believes that since (Mr) Saini was a high-ranking member in the MCA, the harassment that the club has been facing from the Department of Corporate Affairs harps back to that episode,” the club said.

https://indianexpress.com/article/business/companies/facing-harassment-as-we-denied-mca-official-club-membership-says-delhi-gymkhana-club-6413488/lite/