Truce in the air as Vijaypat and Gautam Singhania could be smoking peace pipe

A social media post has sparked off the buzz of a potential reconciliation in India’s corporate world. The hostility, caused by the JK House dispute in the Singhania household, may actually be ending soon.

“(I’m) overwhelmed to have spent some quality family time with my parents recently. Grateful for precious & humbling moments (sic),” Gautam Singhania, the chairman and managing director of the Raymond Group, wrote on his verified Instagram account leading to the talk of a truce with his father Vijaypat with whom he has been at loggerheads for over five years. Singhania Jr has also attached a picture with his parents along with the July 28 post.

Those who know of the family developments say it may not exactly be a publicity exercise and the feuding father-son duo may actually be smoking the peace pipe soon. Gautam, who lives in the JK House building in the Breach Candy area of South Bombay, went to meet his parents in their Malabar Hill house, and spent, as he said, some quality time.

The dispute had come out in the open after Vijaypat (83) accused Gautam (56) of taking away the Chairman Emeritus position in the company and then denying him an exclusive apartment in the JK House. Singhania (Sr) actually had cited a 2007 agreement through which he was to receive a flat in the redeveloped 36-storey JK House in the plush Malabar Hill area.

Gautam had argued that the changes in the company law of 2013 prevented any such allotment. The matter was eventually put up before the shareholders. Gautam had famously abstained from voting but allegedly advised the shareholders to vote against the proposal. Their family issue has gone into arbitration.

The biggest public spat yet between the two was over the autobiography of Vijyapat, which was rather eponymously (after Raymond catchphrase) titled Incomplete Man. It was widely felt that the book would spill the beans on the fight but did not have the expected explosive details, thanks to a slew of multiple rounds of courtroom hearings. The book eventually came out as An Incomplete Life.

The Singhanias were not immediately available for reaction but sources close to the family have revealed that one could soon be seeing an end to this long feud that produced some juicy and sensational headline-grabbing stories in the media.


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