New Delhi, May 25 -- In the geography of Delhi power, few addresses have carried the weight of 2, Safdarjung Road. For over a century, the Delhi Gymkhana Club's 27.3 acres - a perpetual lease in the heart of Lutyens' Delhi, flanked by the country's most sensitive government establishments - served as the Capital's most enduring informal institution: the place where those who ran India came, after hours, to be among their own. On Friday, the government ordered it vacated by June 5. "For many people, elderly people who spent all their lives here, it has become a home - it's like a temple," said AS Dulat, who lead the Research and Analysis Wing and subsequently served as Prime Minister's advisor on Kashmir. A former president of the club, he was unsparing on the question of relocation: "There is no compensation or compromise on this. Either you have a club or you don't have a club. Most people who come to the club are within walking distance. If you send the Gymkhana Club elsewhere, it will not remain the Delhi Gymkhana." He pointed to its sporting legacy. "The national tennis championships have been held there, the Davis Cup has been held there, all the great Indian tennis players trained there. Now you want to shut it down, you can shut it down." Yashovardhan Jha Azad, a former special director of the Intelligence Bureau and Central Information Commissioner, struck a more resigned note, though he questioned the stated security rationale. "It's kind of an oasis. There are tennis courts, a nursery, a swimming pool. It's often easy to say it is the rich and the powerful who come here - but the officers are not rich, and the other half who are members are mostly retired people," he said. "It's a great loss, but yes, we are ready if it is in the national interest." On the heritage dimension he was pointed: "This is a building of the old colonial style, just ground floor, with cottages at the back - my focus is primarily on heritage, and that must be respected." On the security justification: "The prime minister's house is going to be shifted anyway. So where is the security threat? Turning it into a defence establishment will be a monstrosity." The club was founded in July 1913 - two years after King George V announced at the Delhi Durbar that the capital would shift from Calcutta to Delhi - to serve the influx of British civil servants and military officers into the new capital. Its first president was Sir Spencer Harcourt Butler, governor of the then United Provinces of Agra and Oudh; the maharajas of Gwalior, Jaipur, Jodhpur, and Udaipur, and the Nawab of Bhopal, were made life members from the start. The club began at Civil Lines before moving in 1928 to Safdarjung Road, its building designed by Robert T Russell, whose other commissions in the city included Connaught Place and the Commander-in-Chief's residence, later known as Teen Murti House. After Independence, the word "Imperial" was dropped, but the membership's character shifted more slowly. The club's 26 grass courts - along with several hard and synthetic courts - give it, by its own account, the largest concentration of grass courts in the country, second only to Wimbledon's 38. The legal troubles that preceded Friday's order accumulated over a decade. In 2014, the Delhi government moved against the club for failure to pay luxury tax dues of Rs.2.92 crore over three years. A ministry of corporate affairs inspection followed, finding what the National Company Law Tribunal later described as "gross irregularities" - among them that the club had increased registration and processing fees, invested the proceeds in interest-bearing mutual funds, and folded the returns into its income. In April 2022, the NCLT allowed the government to nominate 15 directors to the club's general committee, finding sufficient material to establish mismanagement. The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal subsequently upheld the intervention, holding that the club's affairs were being conducted in a man...