In 1950s, when a business house stood in the dock
On December 11, 1956, the Union government under Jawaharlal Nehru set up a Commission of Inquiry on the administration of the Dalmia-Jain (DJ) Group of companies.
Among its terms of reference was to look into “any irregularities, frauds or breaches of trust or action in disregard of honest commercial practices or contravention of any law” in respect of these companies and “the nature and extent of the personal gains made” by the promoters along with “the losses suffered by the investing public”.
The trigger for appointing the Commission — initially headed by Bombay High Court’s Justice S R Tendolkar and later by former Supreme Court Judge Justice Vivian Bose — was a speech by the Prime Minister’s son-in-law, Feroze Gandhi, in Parliament on December 6, 1955 that exposed the financial manipulations by India’s then third largest business house after Tata and Birla.
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