Bangur Clan Divides Its Charitable Activities Five Ways

The Bangurs have divided the charitable and religious trusts with over Rs 1,000 crore into five family factions.

Once the country's third largest business house (after the Birlas and the Tatas), the Bangurs have split over 20 trusts by lottery among the five clans which are led by K.K.(who heads the Balbhadra Dass faction), Shree Niwas, Shree Kumar, Purshottam Dass-Benu Gopal combine and Laxmi Niwas.

These trusts run over 50 dharmasalas, a number of temples, schools, colleges, hospitals, ayurvedic hospital, Sanskrit colleges and hundreds of sprawling buildings spread across the country.

"The spilt was aimed at improving the performance of the trusts. The trusts remained under the Bangurs group umbrella even after the group itself was divided in mid-eighties. Resultantly, there has not been value addition to the functioning of the trusts over the years. The division is expected to improve services of the trusts," a Bangur family member said.

 

The division took place without the help of a third party." The family members did not employ a chartered accountant or a third party. We jointly decided to divide the trusts by lottery. Now, the boards of trustees are being restructured. The division procedure is expected to be over within a month or so," he said.

This is the second splitting within the group since the late eighties when corporate assets with over Rs 1400 crore that were held by various manufacturing and investment companies were split among the family factions. The trusts had not been covered by the splitting.

Hailing from Didwane, a small village in Rajasthan, Mungee Ram and Ram Coowar, the founder of the Bangur family settled down in the suburbs of Calcutta in 1903 and started commodity and stock trading.

The group flourished under the stewardship of Ram Coowar's adopted son Gokul Chand and Mungee Ram's three grand sons-Narsingh Dass, Rang Nath and Purshottam Dass. The group entered into the country's industrial scene by setting up Indian Paints and taking over Hastings Jute Mills in the sixties. Eventually, the Bangurs emerged as the country's third largest industrial house. Most of the trusts were set up in the glorious days of the sixties.

The trusts, in addition to set up temples, also renovate (Jeevandan) old temples. The trust also set up some schools and health care centers and then handed over to different state governments.

Some of the renowned institutions set up by the trusts are: Bangur Institute of Neurology Center, Calcutta, MRB Engineering College (Rajasthan's largest private engineering college), College of Geography, Didwane and Cancer Research Center in Jaipur. In addition, the trusts had set up large residential colonies at Rishra and Dumdum, at the outskirts of Calcutta.