The public discord inside Tata Trusts, the controlling shareholder of Tata Sons, was bad enough. What’s worse is that it now appears to have become a full-blown war, with a majority of the trustees voting against Mehli Mistry’s continuation as a governing board member on Tuesday, the last day of his three-year term.

There is every possibility that the matter is headed to the courts. The protracted battle threatens to dent the one asset that has powered the Tata story for more than a century: institutional credibility. When the body that owns a decisive 66% of Tata Sons is split, the risk is not abstract. A deep schism within Tata Trusts also has implications for Tata Sons and the broader Tata Group , as the conglomerate encompasses 26 publicly listed companies with aggregate revenues

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