Birlas produce last will of Rameshwardas

The Birla family today produced the last will of Rameshwardas Birla""father of M P Birla""which appointed Ashok Birla as one of the executors and trustees of the will.

The document was produced in court to negate the dispute angle brought forward by the Lodha camp. Lodha's counsel had produced a letter written by Ashok Birla to M P Birla, about their bitter relationship.

However, P K Ray, counsel for Yashovardhan Birla, son of Ashok Birla, said the will of Rameshwardas Birla showed a close relationship.

The will was dated February 1, 1973. The executors and trustees were M P Birla and R D Birla's daughter-in-law, Gopakumari Birla. The Birla counsel argued the ultimate objective of Rameshwardas Birla's will was charity, which was the same as in the mutual wills of M P Birla and Priyamvada Birla of 1981 and their mutual wills of 1982.

The only deviation was in the case of Priyamvada Birla's will of 1999, which bequeathed property to Rajendra Singh Lodha.

Ray also showed documents of Kalyan Nidhi Trust with a corpus of Rs 1 crore, created by M P Birla, in which Yashovardhan Birla was the managing trustee. The relationship between Ashok Birla and M P Birla had no bearing on M P Birla's relationship with Yashovardhan, Ray said.

Ray pointed out Yashovardhan had performed the last rites of both M P Birla and Priyamvada Birla.