Birlas to challenge Harsh Lodha's reinstatement as director in MP Birla Group firms

The Birla family, which has been in a 16-year-old legal battle with the Lodhas to wrest control of the Rs 5,000-crore Birla Estate, has decided to challenge the reinstatement of Harsh Vardhan Lodha as a director in MP Birla Group companies in the Supreme Court.

The decision of the Birlas comes in spite of a favourable verdict from a two-judge division bench of the Calcutta High Court which on Monday had asked the probate court to hear the appellant MP Birla Group companies afresh, which was one of their key petitions.

A division bench of judges Sambuddha Chakrborty and Arindam Mukherjee had ordered the probate court to hear the appellant companies represented by Arvind Kumar Newar afresh even though they refused to go into the merits of the case as such and the jurisdiction issues, saying it is for the probate court to decide.

"We direct the probate court to consider and decide all the aspects of the matter after giving opportunity to these appellant companies," the division bench said in a 38-page order on Monday.

When contacted, a Birla family spokesman refused to comment saying the Birlas are studying the verdict in details, but two sources in the know of the family told PTI that "they will move the Supreme Court against reinstatement of Harsh V Lodha as a director on the board of these companies with remuneration."
Flaying the probate court for not deciding on the jurisdiction issue of the case, the division bench said the court "should have first decided the issue of jurisdiction raised by the Lodhas before granting any interim relief and that the order should have also contained the reasons for granting such relief and thus remanded the matter to the single judge to decide the question of jurisdiction first and accordingly set aside the interim orders."