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Dear Members of TANA:
We know that you have been receiving several mails making several wild accusations against the members of the Governing Board of TANA. Though we have resisted responding to these e-mails so far, we have, with extreme sadness and relcutance, decided to lay bare the truth behind the extraordinary spectacle of the President of TANA publicly demeaning his own organization.
Many of you have already received an e-mail letter dated September 18, 2008, from TANA’s President, Prabhakar Choudary Kakarala calling for an “Extraordinary” meeting of the General Body on October 4, 2008, in Atlanta. In the same email, Mr. Kakarala made a number of allegations about the Governing Board which are utterly baseless and false. Sadly, his e-mail is just the latest in a long series of e-mails sent in recent months by certain individuals spreading false rumors, creating confusion, and fomenting dissension among our members.
Until now, the Governing Board (GB) of TANA, which is made up of the people you elected to the Executive Committee (EC), Board of Trustees (BOT) and TANA Foundation, has resisted responding to these scurrilous e-mails publicly out of a desire to preserve and protect the dignity and reputation of TANA by sparing its members the unseemly public spectacle which results when a family appears to be airing its dirty laundry in public.
In addition, the senders of these e-mails represent a very small group of disgruntled individuals. Some were apparently disgruntled because they had lost an election. Some were apparently disgruntled because they did not get some honor they expected. And some appeared to be victims of manipulation by others. We felt that this kind of pettiness did not deserve a public response.
However, when we reach the point where the President, in violation of his duty to preserve and protect our organization, appears to have chosen to work in concert with those who seem intent on destroying our organization and uses the privileges of his office to engage in personal attacks on others, we, your elected representatives, have no alternative but to set the record straight and to do so publicly. We do this with sadness and extreme reluctance, but feel that the members have a right to know the complete truth.
In his e-mail, the President says that he “stood like a rock with high morals for the unity of organization against the Board.” If you think about this for a moment, the “Board” he stood against is the Governing Board, whose members were elected by you. What Mr. Kakarala is actually saying is that whenever a matter came before your elected representatives for a vote and Mr. Kakarala did not like how your elected representatives voted, he would stand “like a rock” against your elected representatives rather than abide by will of the majority. He is telling you that he refused to follow the rule of law and instead chose a path of opposition and obstruction. Indeed, he claims the moral high ground for thwarting your elected representatives.
We have seen this mindset before. When Pervez Musharraf staged his second coup in Pakistan, he similarly stated that the existing democratically elected government was working at “cross purposes” with itself “thereby weakening the Government.” The rest is history. Democracy died as Musharraf became dictator. It is essential that each and every member concerned with the survival of TANA understand what is really going on and what his real agenda might be.
We apologize for the length of this e-mail, but to ensure that you have a complete and clear understanding of all the issues, we now present you more detailed information so that you can know the truth.
We want you to be clearly aware of the following main issues:
1. Mr. Kakarala’s apparent tendency to act in an impulsive, autocratic manner and to do things his own way, his inappropriate actions and his failure to take necessary actions at the appropriate time are the main reasons for the current leadership crisis in our organization. He has, in direct contravention of his duties as the President, consistently disregarded the charter and bylaws of our organization in his attempts to aid his friend Ravi Madala’s attempts to gain control of the 17th TANA Conference. Mr. Kakarala’s apparent inability and failure to put the organization’s interests before his personal interests is the direct cause for this grave threat to the unity and stability of our organization.
2. On March 22, 2007, Mr. Kakarala (who was then the Executive Vice-president with no authority to sign a contract for TANA) and Ravi Madala (who has no official position in our organization), signed a contract with the Marriott World Center in Orlando. This contract contained a substantial penalty clause, but Mr. Kakarala did not inform either the then president or Executive Committee about this contract. The same Mr. Kakarala, who, in his email, preaches about ‘our prima facie responsibility to be transparent with all our information’ did not inform the Governing Board of this contract even when we were deliberating the change in location of the 17th TANA Conference from Florida to Chicago He did not share this with the Governing Board until April 30, 2008, a full 13 months after he signed the contract in Orlando and almost five weeks after the Governing Board decided to move the 17th Conference to Chicago. This contract resulted in the Marriott Corporation demanding payment of a penalty of $167,195. TANA attorney advised Mr. Kakarala that signing the contract for the hotel without authority made him potentially personally liable for this penalty. Mr. Kakarala told the Executive Committee on May 3, 2008 that he is working with Marriott Corporation to resolve the issue and report back to the EC. He has not, in almost five months since then, updated the TANA Executive Committee, Board of Trustees, Governing Board nor the TANA attorney, about what he has done regarding this penalty. In his letter, he tries to blame this penalty on the Board, yet it is his actions and his concealing of the information that are responsible.
3. Mr. Kakarala, despite repeated urging of the Board of Trustees from December 2007 to respond to requests from attorneys asking for information about TANA, has not done anything about these requests until a lawsuit was filed on February 27, 2008. The failure to provide the requested information is cited as one of the reasons for this lawsuit that is burdening the organization.
4. Mr. Kakarala, in direct contravention of the Governing Board’s decision – a decision which he voted for, has instructed new member applicants NOT to cooperate or provide the verification requested of them causing grave and irreparable damage to the verification process. If Mr. Kakarala had concerns about the membership verification process, he could have called for a Governing Board meeting to ensure that his concerns were met instead of recklessly and irreversibly tainting the membership verification process.
5. Mr. Kakarala’s attempt to call for an Extraordinary General Body Meeting appears to be nothing short of a naked, desperate self-serving attempt to take control of the organization and carry out his agenda. He is also fully aware that the TANA by-laws do not allow for his proposed meeting.
TANA can not continue to have a president who is more interested in serving the will of Ravi Madala than you, the members of TANA.
Extraordinary General Body Meeting
First and foremost, you should know that the General Body of TANA consists of all of TANA’s members. Under our bylaws, the General Body regularly meets only during the TANA conference. Even when the General Body meets during the TANA conference, our bylaws make it expressly clear that the General Body has no authority to take any binding action. Our bylaws make no provision for an Extraordinary General Body Meeting.
Mr. Kakarala has never raised the issue of the extraordinary general body meeting with the Executive Committee or the Board of Trustees though those bodies have been meeting every week for the past two months. We do not understand his rationale for calling the meeting, nor how he settled on the date and the city and how he plans to verify the eligibility of people attending this meeting. We think this is a blatant attempt to circumvent the established democratic structures within TANA in order to get his own way â namely give control of the 17th TANA Conference to his associate Ravi Madala and get out of paying the penalty to the Marriott Corporation.
17th TANA Conference:
You should know that the 17th TANA Conference in 2009 was not originally scheduled for either Orlando or Chicago. Dallas was originally selected as the site. However, when we learned in October, 2006, that appropriate convention facilities would not be available in Dallas in time for the 2009 date, the EC was forced to consider alternative locations. The EC directed then Executive Vice-president Kakarala to review and study potential suitable sites in Florida and to report his findings to the EC. It is important to note that at that time the EC did NOT select a site and did NOT name a conference coordinator. More specifically (as will become crucial later), the EC NEVER authorized Mr. Kakarala to enter into any agreements or commitments on behalf of TANA. He was directed only to review and study and report back to the EC. But, as would seem to become a pattern, he did not comply with that direction.
The Board of Trustees together with EC selects the site for the TANA conference. The BOT did not select Florida as the site for the 2009 Conference until June 16, 2007 (as will become crucial later).
The Executive Committee is the only body authorized to appoint the Conference Coordinator. More specifically (as will become crucial later), the president has NO AUTHORITY WHATSOEVER to appoint the Conference Coordinator.
In July, 2007, your current Governing Board, Executive Committee, Board of Trustees, and Foundation Board took office. At the EC’s first meeting, on July 7, 2007, the new office-bearers deferred the appointment of a Conference Coordinator to a later meeting so that they have more time to study the matter.
At the EC meeting on September 22, 2007, a motion was made to appoint Dr. Sagar Gummadi as the Conference Coordinator for the 2009 Conference. Mr. Kakarala wanted the appointment of Ravi Madala as the coordinator or co-coordinator. When it became apparent that there were sufficient votes for the motion to appoint Dr. Gummadi to pass, Mr. Kakarala abruptly adjourned the meeting before a vote could be taken.
In response to Kakarala’s abrupt termination of the September 2007 meeting, a special meeting of the EC was called for November 5, 2007 to discuss the appointment of the Conference Coordinator.
On November 4, 2007, just one day before this meeting, Mr. Kakarala presented the Governing Board with a letter in which Mr. Kakarala purported to appoint Ravi Madala (who is now one of the named plaintiffs in the lawsuit pending against TANA in Maryland) as the Conference Coordinator of the 17th Conference. Even before he circulated this letter to your elected representatives, Mr. Kakarala had arranged for this letter of appointment to be printed in the TANA Patrika and distributed to the membership. As you all know, there is a significant time lapse between submitting anything for publication in the Patrika and the printed Patrika reaching the members; from this you can see that he had been concealing this information from your elected representatives for several weeks. It is important to understand that Mr. Kakarala HAD ABSOLUTELY NO AUTHORITY to make this appointment and he was well aware of that fact.
The Board of Trustees made clear to Mr. Kakarala that he had absolutely no authority to do what he had done. Mr. Kakarala was forced to retract his unlawful appointment.
At the November 5, 2007 meeting, the EC appointed Dr. Sagar Gummadi as the Conference Coordinator. Mr. Kakarala continued his efforts to obstruct the appointment of Dr. Gummadi by challenging the sufficiency of the notice of the November 5, 2007 meeting in an appeal to the Board of Trustees.
On December 13, 2007, the EC once again met and voted to appoint Dr. Gummadi as Conference Coordinator. Mr. Kakarala nevertheless continued to lobby on behalf of Ravi Madala, seeking to have him appointed as “co-coordinator” of the 17th Conference.
After failing in his attempts to have the EC appoint Ravi Madala, Mr. Kakarala seemed, at best, lukewarm in his responses to Dr. Gummadi.
We now have reason to believe that between November 5, 2007 and December 13, 2007 the wheels were set in motion for the next attack against TANA. In December, 2007, Ravi Gandhy applied for membership using Ravi Madala as a reference. Two months later, he was one of two plaintiffs who filed a lawsuit against TANA in which Ravi Madala later joined as a plaintiff. We will address this lawsuit in more detail later in this letter. In December and January, TANA began to receive letters from attorneys and a lawsuit was filed against TANA in February 2008 on behalf of Ravi Gandhy and Sridhar Vasireddy of Florida.
On March 29, 2008, the EC, after hearing from Dr. Gummadi that the atmosphere in Florida was not conducive to conduct a successful conference, recommended to the Governing Board to move the 2009 Conference from Florida to Chicago. The Midwest Regional Vice-president, after consulting with Telugu community leaders from Chicago, assured the EC and GB of the Chicago community’s willingness to host the Conference. All the while these discussions were going on, Mr. Kakarala NEVER ONCE mentioned that he and Ravi Madala had already signed a contract in TANA’s name with the Marriott hotel in Orlando Florida ALMOST A YEAR EARLIER in March of 2007.
Instead, at the March 2008 EC meeting, Mr. Kakarala told the GB only that an “advance” of $50,000 had been paid to the convention center in Orlando and that it would be lost if the location of the TANA Convention were moved away from Florida. When the past and present treasurers informed the GB that there was no record of TANA making any such payment, Mr. Kakarala changed his story and now claimed that he was not sure of the amount and that it may only be about $15,000. As noted earlier, Mr. Kakarala never mentioned the contract with the Marriott hotel. The Governing Board, without knowing about this critical piece of information, and after a thorough discussion of the issues, voted to move the 2009 Conference to Chicago. The Board of Trustees, including Mr. Kakarala, endorsed this decision unanimously.
On April 24, 2008, Mr. Kakarala came to Chicago to meet with the representatives of the Rosemont Convention Center and the hotels in the area. He also met with several leaders of the Telugu community in Chicago to announce that 2009 TANA Conference would be held in Chicago in 2009. Later, he announced the same at the Tristate Telugu Association Ugadi function. When asked by a GB member if he found out what penalty was to be paid by TANA for the Orlando Convention Center, he now said that it was going to be about $20,000.
On April 30, 2008, Mr. Kakarala informed the Governing Board FOR THE FIRST TIME that he and Ravi Madala had signed a contract with the Marriott hotel in Orlando on March 22, 2007 and that the contract had a penalty clause which provided that if the contract were canceled less than 500 days and more than 365 days before the event, 50% of the average room rentals due for the number of room nights reserved would be payable as a penalty. Mr. Kakarala had withheld from the GB the fact that he had signed a contract which might have obligated TANA to pay a substantial penalty even while the GB was deliberating the move of the Conference from Florida to Chicago.
So, in March, 2007, Kakarala had signed a contract for 2810 room nights at an average daily rate of $125.00. Then he concealed this fact from your elected representatives for more than THIRTEEN months. Once again, remember that neither Mr. Kakarala nor Mr. Madala had any authority to sign a contract on behalf of TANA in March 2007. It was not until May 2, 2008, that Mr. Kakarala finally informed the GB that this penalty, if enforced, would come to $167,500.
At the May 3, 2008 EC meeting, Mr. Kakarala assured the EC that he was discussing the matter with the Marriott Hotel and he will report back to the EC. Mr. Kakarala has since failed to keep the EC, BOT, or GB apprised of any further developments with the possible penalty from the Orlando convention center. In fact, after being advised by Mr. Green, the attorney representing TANA in the lawsuit in Maryland, that signing the contract without authority made him potentially personally liable for the penalty, Mr. Kakarala sent Mr. Green an e-mail which stated: “Thank you for providing legal help in defending lawsuit against TANA. I appreciate you [sic] limit your services to that extent only.”
Mr. Kakarala has never told the Governing Board whether the penalty has been waived or if the hotel is still seeking the penalty. We have reason to believe that the hotel is communicating with Mr. Kakarala monthly but, to date, he has never shared those communications with your elected representatives. In Mr. Kakarala’s September 18, 2008 e-mail, he accuses the Board (which he intentionally kept in the dark) of not doing anything. What he failed to tell you (and us) was what HE did as the President regarding this issue. You might want to ask him.
On, May 3, 2008, on Mr. Kakarala’s recommendation, the EC appointed Yugandhar Yadlapati as the Conference Coordinator of the 17th Conference in Chicago. On June 16, 2008, Mr. Kakarala signed a contract with the Rosemont Convention Center in Chicago and released a statement to the media announcing Chicago as the site of the 17th Conference and Yugandhar Yadlapati as the Coordinator of the Conference.
On July 26, 2008, Mr. Kakarala, once again without informing your elected representatives on the EC, BOT, and GB, participated in a Conference Committee meeting in Chicago during which Ravi Madala, (one of the plaintiffs currently suing TANA), was announced as the Chairman of the Conference Committee. When your elected representatives asked him how he could allow the appointment of someone suing TANA to chair a TANA committee, Mr. Kakarala claimed that he was not aware that Ravi Madala was going to be named as the Conference Committee chairman before he attended the July 26 meeting in Chicago. However, as your president, he never objected to the appointment either.
On September 1, 2008, an e-mail was received by many members of TANA claiming that a “TANA2009 Conference” was going to be held at Florida during the July 4 weekend and that Ravi Madala and Ranakumar Nadella should be contacted for more information. The e-mail seems to give the impression that the TANA President may be associated with this conference competing with TANA’s official 17th TANA Conference.
On September 3, 2008, at the BOT meeting, the Trustees asked Mr. Kakarala to clarify his stance on the issue. Mr. Kakarala assured the Trustees that he was standing 100% behind the Chicago conference. He promised to issue a public statement to that effect within one day. He did NOT do so.
Again, at the September 10, 2008 BOT meeting, the President assured the Trustees once again that he was fully supportive of the Chicago conference and that he would issue a public statement to that effect within one day. Once again, he did NOT do so.
Instead, on September 19, 2008, he circulated his now infamous e-mail .
The Governing Board is fully committed to holding the 17th TANA Conference in Chicago and making it a great success.
The Lawsuit against TANA
There have been several e-mails recently, including the one from Mr. Kakarala, claiming that the lawsuit was only about information requests and that the plaintiffs resorted to the lawsuit only because they didn’t get the information they were entitled to.
But, the lawsuit is about much more than a request for information. The first count in the lawsuit asks the court to declare the 2001 amendments to the bylaws invalid and to declare that the 1995 bylaws are the valid bylaws of the organization. You should know that that the 2001 amendments to the bylaws were probably the most deliberated by-laws in the history of TANA. The process started with the publication of the suggested amendments in the September 1999 issue of TANA Patrika. They were discussed and debated at several meetings of the TANA governing bodies before being finally adopted two years later in 2001.
You may well ask, why would someone file a lawsuit in 2008 seeking to reinstitute 13-year-old bylaws which had been amended at least three times in the interim? The answer is simple. Before the 2001 amendments, the president of TANA was the Conference Coordinator and could appoint anyone he chose. If the 1995 bylaws were still in effect, Mr. Kakarala could have legally done precisely what he tried to do illegally; i.e. unilaterally make his friend, Ravi Madala, the Conference Coordinator for the 17th TANA Conference. An added benefit for Mr. Kakarala, personally, would be that if the conference were held at the Marriott hotel where he and Mr. Madala signed the contract without authority, Mr. Kakarala be off the hook for the cancellation penalty discussed earlier.
Is Mr. Kakarala’s acting on “high morals” as he claims, or simply out of his own self-interest? Based upon his pattern of conduct, we think the answer is clear.
We believe that the lawsuit is nothing but a bludgeon to force your elected representatives to capitulate to Ravi Madala’s will by moving the 17th TANA Conference back to Florida and give him effective control over it. Having the court declare that the 1995 bylaws are still in effect would present the ultimate victory to Mr. Madala because his most ardent supporter in TANA would thereby be empowered to reverse the decisions of your elected representatives and appoint him Coordinator of the 17th Conference.
Mr. Kakarala, in his September 18 letter, also proclaims. “If someone requests information it is our duty to present all information without any hesitation. As a public charity under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, it is our prima facie responsibility to be transparent with all our information.”
Yet, in December 2007, when TANA began receiving letters from attorneys asking specific information, several GB members asked Mr. Kakarala to consult with an attorney and respond to these letters immediately. They even suggested that he delegate this responsibility to someone else if he is unable to take care of these requests himself. Mr. Kakarala, who now champions the cause of sharing all information, did neither in response to these requests.
Again, on February 6, 2008, there was another request for information from an attorney addressed to Mr. Kakarala and the Chairperson of the BOT. Alarmed by the lack of response from Mr. Kakarala, the Chair of BOT called for an emergency meeting of the BOT on February 12, 2008. The trustees asked the president once again to retain an attorney immediately and provide the appropriate response. Once again, Mr. Kakarala did not do that.
On February 27, 2008, a lawsuit was filed against TANA. One of the principal grounds used by the plaintiffs to bring this lawsuit and use the lawsuit to burden our organization with demand that we produce a horrendous amount of documents was TANA’s failure to respond to the information requests in a timely manner. The plaintiffs’ supporters used the same in their publicity campaign against TANA.
Mr. Kakarala also now laments the enormous cost of this litigation. You might want to ask him why he did not avoid this burden by addressing these requests for information for almost two and a half months. Imagine how much cost and pain TANA could have been spared if only Mr. Kakarala had chosen to cooperate with our requests as opposed to ignoring or defying them.
How shameful for him to blame others for his failures?
New Member Verification
How many Telugus do you know with a name like “Mac Apple”? Well, that was the name of one of the new member applicants in February, 2008.
The Governing Board, concerned that someone might be trying to pad the membership rolls of TANA for improper purposes, asked the Chairman of the Membership Verification Committee to send a letter asking ALL the new applicants to prove their eligibility. The membership verification committee sent such a letter in the first week of July.
Immediately, Mr. Kakarala, once again, without consulting the EC, BOT, or GB, and in willful and flagrant contravention of the resolution of the Governing Board, took it upon himself to send a letter to all the new members urging them not to respond to this letter. We invite you to ask yourselves: “What legitimate reason could the President of TANA have to obstruct TANA’s ability to determine whether an applicant for membership was legitimate? We can’t think of one. Hence, we invite you to ask yourselves: “If there is no legitimate reason why the president of TANA would want to obstruct TANA’s ability to verify its membership, is it possible that Mr. Kakarala is working for someone other than you, the members of TANA? If you have gotten this far, you have probably already figured out who Mr. Kakarala might be working for and it doesn’t seem to be you.
Recognizing that the process of verification has been irrevocably tainted by the President’s unlawful action, the GB asked the BOT to develop new guidelines for verification of new members.
In his September 18 e-mail, Mr. Kakarala claims that he has not seen these guidelines yet. Well, that might give you the impression that the BOT is either being secretive or not doing its job. Perhaps, that is what Mr. Kakarala wants you to believe. However, what he has not told you is that the Board of Trustees, of which Mr. Kakarala is a member, has been meeting every week for the past several weeks to develop these guidelines, that Mr. Kakarala is taking an active part in these deliberations, that a process for finalizing these guidelines incorporating some of Mr. Kakarala’s own suggestions has been approved by the BOT and that draft guidelines are almost ready. In fact, they would have been finalized last week but for the fact that Mr. Kakarala did not attend the last meeting of the Board of Trustees on September 17, 2008.
Conclusion
Mr. Kakarala claims that: “â¦with orchestrated effort, Mr. Komati Jayaram, Mr. Nannapaneni Mohan and Mr. Thotakura Prasad decided to stop Mr. Madala at any cost from taking active role in the 17th TANA conference. I have tried my best along with several community members to reach an amicable solution with so many options, it is of no avail. To achieve their selfish interests, they have undermined the unity of our organization. This rift has caused an irreparable damage to TANA.”
What is really going on here? If only the three named individuals were the ones opposed to Ravi Madala having an active part in the conference, the EC would long ago have by an overwhelming majority appointed him.
The fact is that a majority of the EC, elected by you, voted to appoint Dr. Gummadi as the Conference Coordinator for the 17th TANA Conference instead of Mr. Madala. Having lost the vote, Mr. Madala and his supporters, Mr. Kakarala among them, apparently decided that if they couldn’t get their way democratically, they would try to get their way through rumor mongering, spreading falsehoods, defamation, threats and intimidation and even abusing the process of courts in an attempt to force the EC to capitulate and bend to their will, i.e. Mr. Madala’s will, and if it meant destroying TANA in the process, that appears to be of no concern to them. Rather than abide by the rule of law, the minority now wishes to tyrannize the majority.
Mr. Kakarala’s claim amounts to saying that the EC’s refusal to be bullied and intimidated by him is what is responsible for the “rift”, not the rumor mongering, falsehoods, fomenting dissension, bullying and intimidation of Mr. Madala’s associates. That is like saying that when a rapist attacks a young woman and she puts up a fight to defend herself, it she and not the rapist, who is responsible for the resulting injuries.
In summary, it is sadly becoming clear that we can not survive as an organization with a president who actually takes pride in his oppositional defiance to the will of the majority and in his repeated violations of the by-laws of the organization. We can not survive with a president who is more interested in serving the will of Ravi Madala than you, the members of TANA.
Rest assured that, we, your elected representatives, take our obligations to you, the members, seriously and we hold the health and welfare of TANA first as opposed to serving the interests of one or two well-heeled, disgruntled individuals who do not hesitate to resort to intimidation and bullying rather than democratic means, who would not hesitate to destroy TANA if they don’t get their way.
We ask for your continued support for our ongoing efforts to uphold the ideals of this organization and pursue its mission. We urge you to participate actively in the 17th TANA Conference in Chicago in July 2009 and with your help we will make it a grand success! We also urge you not to participate in any competing event staged by the disgruntled minority the only purpose of which is to harm TANA.
Yours in service of TANA,
The Governing Board of TANA.
