Taking a cue from the below-the-line offensive that corporate players use to pep up market share, the Birla family has launched a peer-group propaganda against Rajendra Singh Lodha to win mind share in the war of the will.

The country’s first business family has mounted a fresh offensive against Lodha with an audio-visual presentation for select audiences and a 228-page dossier for employees of Birla companies, business associates and prominent Calcuttans.

“I received the document around a month ago. Though it bears the name of some Kolkata Centre for Social Equity as publisher, there is little doubt that the Birla family is behind the publication,” said a city-based industrialist, on condition of anonymity.

The 228-page document includes a compilation of verdicts — from Calcutta High Court and the Company Law Board — that have gone against Lodha (as also newspaper clippings) in the Priyamvada Birla bequeath battle.

Besides, regular meetings with prominent Calcuttans are held at Birla Building — the family’s business headquarters on RN Mukherjee Road — where an audio-visual presentation is played out to highlight the “misdeeds” of Lodha.

“These are all rumours. We are not aware of any such publications or special meetings,” claimed a Birla family confidant, when contacted on Thursday.

The Lodha camp, though, is keeping a close watch on all these developments. “Our client will initiate civil and criminal proceedings against people who are engaging in such slander campaigns,” said Debanjan Mondal of Fox & Mondal, solicitors for Lodha.

But sources close to the family suggest that all these below-the-line strategies had been drawn up to corner Lodha among the closely-knit Marwari community in town.

“Then, there is also the need to pep up the morale of the employees of various Birla group companies to enable them to argue for their babus,” explained the source.

The anti-Lodha campaign mounted a public platform on Thursday when the Birlas fired a fresh salvo against the chartered accountant by flashing a forensic report.

N.G. Khaitan, solicitor representing the Birla family, claimed that the report corroborated their earlier charge that a Lodha associate had forged the directors’ minutes book of Rameshwara Jute Mills Ltd.

“This is an attempt to gain cheap publicity in a sub-judice matter,” countered Mondal of Fox & Mondal.