The Birlas on Friday lost their right to contest the will produced by R S Lodha to claim the Rs 5,000 crore (Rs 50 billion) MP Birla Group fortunes.
Lodha had presented in Calcutta high court for probate a 1999 will purportedly left behind by MP Birla group head Priyamvada Birla. The will was being challenged by the Birlas.
But Justice K J Sengupta ordered that the Birla scions B K Birla, K K Birla and Yashovardhan Birla -- who had filed a caveat to be heard as and when Lodha tried to probate the will -- didn't have the right to challenge it.
With the verdict, Lodha has won round one of the legal battle. He can now try to probate the will.
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However, it is too early to say he has finally laid his hands on the MP Birla Group assets.
This is because the Birlas have the option of moving a division bench and then the Supreme Court. And, other members of the Birla family have also filed allied cases that have been turned in lawsuits that will take time to be settled.
Another morale booster came for Lodha when Justice Sengupta said that he could be a party to the hearings on two other wills that the Birlas had placed in court claiming them to be the actual decrees of inheritance left behind by Priyamvada and MP Birla.
The two 'concurrent and mutual will' that were supposedly drawn out in 1982 left the MP Birla group wealth to a charitable trust run by the group.
Justice Sengupta said Lodha could be a party to the 1982 wills case because he was one of its executors.
Priyamvada Birla, widow of Madhav Prasad Birla, who died on July 3, 2004, had bequeathed assets worth over Rs 5,000 crore to Kolkata-based chartered accountant Rajendra S Lodha setting off a bitter court battle between the Birlas and Lodha.
The astounded Birlas got together to fight the 'outsider' and to keep him from 'taking away the family's property.'
After more than a year and a half of legal wrangling, the first round of the battle has now gone to Lodha.
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