History of Punjab National Bank || Speech by Kajal Sah, Kolkata.

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History of Punjab National Bank || Speech by Kajal Sah, Kolkata. Punjab National Bank is a PSU working under the government of India regulated by the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, and the Banking Regulation Act, 1949. It was registered on 19 May 1894 under the Indian Companies Act, with its office in Anarkali Bazaar, Lahore, in pre-independent India (present-day Pakistan). The founding board was drawn from different parts of India professing different faiths, and of varying backgrounds, with the common objective of creating a truly national bank that would further the economic interest of the country. PNB's founders included several leaders of the Swadeshi movement such as Dyal Singh Majithia and Lala Harkishen Lal, Lala Lalchand, Kali Prasanna Roy, E. C. Jessawala, Prabhu Dayal, Bakshi Jaishi Ram, and Lala Dholan Dass. Lala Lajpat Rai was actively associated with the management of the Bank in its early years. The board first met on 23 May 1894. The bank opened for business on 12 April 1895 in Lahore.

PNB is the first Indian bank to have been started solely with Indian capital that survives to the present earlier Oudh Commercial Bank was established in 1881 but failed in 1958.

In 1900 PNB established its first branch outside Lahore in India. Branches in Karachi and Peshawar followed. The next major event occurred in 1940 when PNB absorbed Bhagwan (or Bhagwan) Dass Bank, which had its head office in Dehra.

At the Partition of India and the creation of Pakistan, PNB lost its premises in Lahore but continued to operate in Pakistan. Partition forced PNB to close 92 offices in West Pakistan, one-third of its total number of branches, and which held 40% of the total deposits. PNB still maintained a few caretaker branches. On 31 March 1947, even before Partition, PNB had decided to leave Lahore and transfer its registered office to India; it received permission from the Lahore High Court on 20 June 1947, at which time it established a new head office at Under Hill Road, Civil Lines in New Delhi. Lala Yodh Raj was the Chairman of the Bank.