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My first reactions ⦠I arrived at the meeting hall at the scheduled time and found that there were only 20 -25 people in the auditorium. Since the food was ordered for 500 people, I thought that the meeting venue may have changed. But when inquired, it was confirmed that the 25 member gathering is the TANA general body meeting. People started showing up slowly and reached a count of approximately 100 â 115. I inquired about the current TANA membership count and to my surprise; I was told that there are approximately 30,000 members in TANA. Since there was no membership verification occurred at the venue, I got a chance to go inside as well.
Meeting Content .. Several people spoke including Nadella Rana Kumar, Alapati Ravi, Mukkamala Appa Rao, Koganti Ramakrishna and few others. Mostly the speeches were targeted towards criticizing a couple of people in the governing board and addressed neither the history nor the future of the organization. This atmosphere disappointed the attendees.
The Law .. The Attorney explained that according to Maryland By-laws, TANA Governing Board doesnât have the authority to remove the President.
Proposals .. The proposal was made to reinstate Mr. Kakarala as the president. If the law doesnât permit the removal, I found it funny to make a resolution to reinstate the President back in his seat.
The second proposal was made to changed the conference to Florida. Apparently Mr. Kakarala signed Florida and Chicago convention centers and later announced the Chicago Conference through media and TANA Magazine. I thought that they would at least address the penalties to be paid to Chicago Convention Center, but didnât. Future only decides, what Mr. Kakarala is planning to do with the Chicago Conference Center (or) what Chicago Telugu Community is planning to do with Mr. Kakarala.
After these two proposals, the rest were pretty much expected.
The third proposal was made to appoint Mr. Madala Ravi as the Coordinator for the Conference in Florida. I thought that Mr. Madala would announce that he is dropping the lawsuit against TANA, in exchange for the position offered. It didnât happen. Surprisingly either Mr. Kakarala, who pronounced as reinstated President few minutes ago, or the meeting attendees didnât bring up this topic.
The fourth proposal, the master of all, was made to remove approximately 15 Governing Board members from their current positions. Based on the attorneyâs earlier explanation, the Governing Board can not remove the president. I thought for a minute âDoesnât the same law apply here?â. Later when inquired, I was told that it is the general body and not the president, who decided to remove 15 members. But I didnât understand how 100 people in a general body meeting can make decisions in a 30,000 member organization. One of the fellow attendees told me because only a few attendees come to these meetings TANA By-Laws say general body meeting occurs only during the TANA Conference and no official business can be conducted there. Not sure how Mr. Kakarala and his attorney would fight the legitimacy of this meeting and the above proposals.
My thoughts .. I was disappointed that such a small number attended this meeting though there was a lot of hype about it. How this meeting can have any effect on TANA, I donât understand.
Written By aditya modepalli
