Bengaluru: November 3 marks the official start of the winter racing season and there is no license in sight for the Bangalore Turf Club, which continues to buckle under its growing financial burden.
Anxiety is palpable among stakeholders, including trainers, owners and the various club employees, as the Extra General Body Meeting, scheduled for November 15, approaches. Stakeholders, however, have no intention of letting the matter rest until then: The Karnataka Trainers Association and the Karnataka Racehorse Owners Association have decided to send the club members a legal notice, demanding that they step in and pay for the maintenance of the horses until racing resumes. "Members, apart from the ones who own horses, have very little financial stake in the club's operations," said a source from within BTC.
Currently, a member pays a paltry annual fee of '250 to keep his membership valid, while the onus of maintaining the club itself, in the light of its waning resources, falls on owners - and in their absence - trainers. “Owners can no longer afford to bear the cost of maintaining the horses when they are not earning,” said a KROA member.
Supreme Court lawyer M.T. Nanaiah will meet with the associations on Friday evening to chalk out the details and the notice is expected to be sent out in a day or two.
Repeated attempts to meet the Chief Minister have failed to bear fruit so far, with the CM maintaining his public stance about the CID enquiry. "The government has said that it wishes to wait until the CID inquiry is complete, but I don't see the connection," said Harimohan Naidu, Chairman, Bangalore Turf Club.
"If someone is indicted and proved guilty by the court, the law will take its course and has little to do with the club’s operations. We have reached out to the CM on a number of occasions but he hasn't been able to give us quality time. We're looking at other avenues through which to get access to him. Ultimately, we need to impress upon him the fact that the livelihoods of so many people and the well-being of the horses is at stake." he said.
The two associations have scheduled an official meeting with their local MLA, Dinesh Gundu Rao at his office in Gandhinagar, on Friday morning to explain the situation.
"We have also sent an official letter to the CM, asking for his time, which we hope will happen in the next couple of days, after our meeting with Rao," said a source from the Karnataka Racehorse Owners Association.
The Extra General Body Meeting will decide the matter of broadening the membership base.
"We will know better how to proceed at the point," said Naidu. "The members, who are the supreme body, will take a decision as we look at other courses of action to ensure that order is maintained at the club," he explained.
Meanwhile, the club is cutting expenses as far as possible to keep itself afloat.
"We're trying to reduce the number of employees and re-evaluate our manpower requirements, as many departments within the club are not functional."
GST blow to BTC
The absence of a corpus has made the matter at hand even more critical: "Most of what we make is given back to the punters, which is why our turnover is so high. We usually report a profit of about Rs 2 crore, which is very minimal,” said Harimohan Naidu, Chairman, Bangalore Turf Club.
Some Rs 140 crore is paid to the state government in tax each year, although the GST rollout in July this year dealt BTC a lethal blow before the licence stalemate, with the club reporting a loss at the end of the season. "Our turnover fell by upto 40%," he said, which has only worsened the current situation.
Naidu added that the members have fixed the cost of a membership at Rs 5 lakh, which will be paid by the nominees themselves and not the state government.
Uncertain future?
A letter by club member A.V. Jayaprakash, urging other members to give in to the government's demands has made it to the public domain and mentions the "reported closing" of the historic Kunigal Stud Farm, which was leased by liquor baron Vijay Mallya in 1987.
The 450-acre property, currently owned by the state government, began its equestrian history back in the 1760s, when Tipu Sultan set up a stud farm to breed his own personal brood of war horses.
Zain Mirza, Managing Director, Kunigal Stud Farm, put the rumours at rest, saying,
"Our lease will expire in 2022, at which point the government, following due process, will call for tenders. We may bid then and have no intention of giving it up before that. Talk of our closure is mere speculation."
