Changing who sits on a trust’s board is one of the most common reasons trustees come to the Charity Commissioner’s office, and one of the most commonly delayed. A trustee dies, resigns, or reaches the end of a term; the board appoints someone; and everyone assumes the appointment is complete because a resolution has been passed. It is not complete until the change is reported and recorded in the Public Trust Register.
Key facts
- Follow the deed
- The appointment is complete only once recorded in the Public Trust Register
- Report
- Change report to the Deputy or Assistant Charity Commissioner, ordinarily within 90 days (Section 22)
- Papers
- Resolution, resignation letter or death certificate, consent of the new trustee with ID and address proof, deed clause, register extract
- From 1 September 2025
- Record whether each trustee is tenure or perpetual; perpetual trustees are capped at one-fourth unless the deed allows more (Section 30A)
- Filed late?
- Can be accepted for sufficient cause, with costs paid by the trustee
Two separate steps
The first step is the appointment itself, which happens the way the trust deed says it happens. This is worth stressing: the deed governs. If it says a vacancy is filled by the surviving trustees, that is the route. If it requires a particular majority, or reserves the power to a named person or family, or fixes a maximum number of trustees, those terms have to be followed. An appointment made in a way the deed does not permit is vulnerable, and the office may decline to record it.
The second step is reporting the change. Because the names and addresses of the trustees are entries in the register, a change in them is a change under Section 22 of the Maharashtra Public Trusts Act, 1950, and has to be reported to the Deputy or Assistant Charity Commissioner in the prescribed form — ordinarily within 90 days of the change occurring. The change report is how the register is brought up to date.
The faster route for trustee name changes
The Maharashtra Public Trusts (Second Amendment) Act, 2017 added a streamlined procedure for reports that concern changes in the names and addresses of trustees or managers. In outline:
- The report may be provisionally accepted within fifteen working days;
- a window of thirty days follows in which objections can be raised;
- if no objection is raised, the acceptance becomes final without a full inquiry;
- if an objection is raised, the matter goes to inquiry, which the amendment contemplates being completed within about three months.
This was a deliberate attempt to stop routine board changes from sitting in the system for years. It works well when the change is genuinely uncontested and the papers are complete. It does not help where a co-trustee or a member of the founding family objects — at that point the matter is contested and is decided after hearing the parties.
What is usually filed
Practice varies between offices, but a report of this kind is normally supported by:
- the resolution of the board making the appointment, or recording the resignation or death;
- the resignation letter, or the death certificate, as the case may be;
- the consent of the incoming trustee to act;
- identity and address proof of the incoming trustee;
- a copy of the trust deed and the relevant clause relied on;
- the current register extract.
A short covering note explaining which clause of the deed authorises the appointment saves a great deal of correspondence.
Since September 2025: tenure and perpetual trustees
The Maharashtra Public Trusts (Second Amendment) Act, 2025 added Section 30A, in force from 1 September 2025. Every appointment should now record whether the new trustee is a tenure trustee (appointed for a specific period) or a perpetual trustee (appointed for life or as a permanent trustee). Where the deed is silent on the term, the trustees may appoint or re-appoint a trustee unanimously for up to five years at a time. Where the deed does not provide for perpetual trustees, they cannot exceed one-fourth of the board, and the total can never exceed the maximum the deed fixes. An appointment that breaks these limits invites objection to the change report. See the 2025 amendment explained.
Filing late
The 90-day period is not always met, often for understandable reasons — a death in the founding family, records that are not traceable, a board that did not know the obligation existed. The 2017 amendment recognised this and allows the Deputy or Assistant Charity Commissioner to entertain a report filed beyond the period where sufficient cause is shown, with costs payable by the trustee. What that means in practice is that a delay has to be explained rather than glossed over, and it is far better to file late with a candid explanation than not to file at all.
Why it is worth doing promptly
Until the register is updated, the trust’s official face is the old board. Banks will query signatories. A purchaser examining title to trust property will raise it. A funder will notice that the person signing the application is not a recorded trustee. And where several changes have gone unreported over the years, the reports usually have to be filed and decided in sequence, which turns a small task into a long one.
Where the board itself is divided about who is properly in office, the question stops being administrative. That is a dispute between trustees, and it is resolved on the material and the terms of the deed, not by whoever files first.
This note sets out general information about procedure under the Maharashtra Public Trusts Act, 1950. It is not legal advice, and the position in any particular matter depends on its own facts and on the law as it stands at the time. Statutory references should be checked against the current text of the Act and Rules.
See also: How to remove a trustee in Maharashtra.
See also: Sample formats for a change of trustee.
Free download: Change report checklist (Section 22) (PDF) · all free formats