Bombay Time was one of the two official time zones established in British India in 1884. The time zone was established during the International Meridian Conference held at Washington, D.C in the United States in 1884. It was then decided that India would have two time zones, with Calcutta (now Kolkata) using the 90th meridian east and Bombay (now Mumbai) the 75th meridian east. Bombay Time was set at 4 hours and 51 minutes ahead of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).
However, Bombay Time was difficult to convert to Indian Standard Time (IST) after it was adopted on 1 January 1906 as the official time zone of India. During the conversion in Bombay, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, a prominent freedom fighter of the Indian independence movement was put on trial in a bombing case. With public sentiment against the government, prominent barrister Pherozeshah Mehta argued against the change. He managed to stall proceedings in the Bombay Municipal Corporation for a few days by arguing that the government did not take the people into confidence. Faced with rising public resentment over the trial, the government shelved the conversion, and Bombay Time was maintained until 1955.