The protest hunger strike at the gate of Calcutta Swimming Club. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya

Even as Calcutta Club celebrates its centenary this year, two other colonial clubs in the city of century-plus vintage are also in the news, but for all the wrong reasons.

While Calcutta Swimming Club (CSC) on Strand Road was locked out on March 13 following labour trouble, the president of Tollygunge Club chose to step down at the end of last month after muck flew back and forth in the wake of an acrimonious EGM.

At CSC, the management was “forced to declare” a lockout after the staff froze service to members on the evening of March 2, protesting the club’s move to showcause four “errant employees for gross indiscipline”.

The staff of the riverside swimming club, established in 1887 (then known as The Calcutta Swimming Baths), chose the peak evening hours for maximum effect to go on a wildcat strike.

“There was a party on at the poolside and service was suddenly discontinued. There were foreigners staying in the guest rooms, who were stumped and left in a rush,” lamented club president Anand Chopra.

The management had showcaused the four employees on allegations of “illegal assembly during duty hours, shouting slogans and heckling of staff and members” on the premises.

“Matters came to a head when they manhandled a staff member in end-February. However, such instances of insolence had become absolutely commonplace at the club and we were at our tether’s end. Before every big event at the club, they would try to blackmail us with unjust demands,” Chopra complained.

“All these are false allegations to malign us. We want the showcause notice withdrawn and the lockout lifted at the earliest,” countered Subrata Basu Roy of the staff union, on a protest hunger strike with colleagues at the entrance.

With neither the 165-strong staff union nor the management in any mood to budge from their respective stances, the stalemate at the waterfront rendezvous continues.

On the southern fringes, the Tolly Club, not long ago making it to a BBC list of the world’s 20 top country clubs, is functioning, but in turmoil after president Abhijit Mazumdar put in his papers.

“I do not believe that the club is a battlefield and I certainly do not wish to fight to remain president,” Mazumdar wrote to “fellow members” in an open letter on March 22.

Although matters at the club — a favourite haunt for the city’s consular corps crazy about golf — reached a flashpoint at the stormy EGM with the resignation of auditors Lovelock & Lewes, the initial trigger was the president’s efforts to modify certain long-standing club rules.

For instance, he moved a resolution that no member who has been on a committee for over five years, could stand for re-election — which created an uproar and was defeated, among others. Lovelock & Lewes, on its part, stated the resignation was “on grounds of good corporate governance”.

A section of the members had also initiated a campaign against Mazumdar pointing out that he was a “resident of Delhi” and hence, “not qualified” to head a Calcutta institution, which the president countered vehemently.

“I am sure that the present phase of unrest will pass,” Mazumdar wrote in his parting letter. However, even as the club’s vice-president M.J.Z Moula took over the reins for the remainder of the term and CEO K.B. Menon put up a brave front saying “things are normal”, Tolly is clearly in the throes of one of its worst tumults ever.