The Hindu College was established in 1817. It was rechristened Presidency College in 1855. However, the Alumni Association of the College did not come into existence at that time. An attempt of sorts was made on January 1, 1875 when a re-union of past students took place in 'Marakata Kunja'-Emerald Bower – of the Tagores. The occasion has been made memorable by Rajnarayan Basu in his history of the Presidency College written in Bengali.

On the College Founders' Day – January 20 of 1915, some alumni, under the leadership of Prafulla Chandra Ghosh decided to establish an old Boys Association. Unfortunately, nothing came out of that move. In 1925, a similar initiative taken by the same Professor met with identical fate. On March 20, 1926 some sort of an 'alumni meet' took place when the College arranged a gathering of 'Veteran graduates of fifty years' standing.

A more organized attempt was made in 1934 and a Presidency College Association was formed with Surendra Nath Mallick as Chairman and Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis as Secretary. But unfortunately once again the endeavour proved to be ephemeral. On January 19, 1951, a meeting of the former students of the College was called by a Press Notice. It was held in the Physics Lecture Theatre with Mahmood Ahmad (1903-1908), the senior most alumnus present on the chair. Among other things, the meeting set up an Organizing Committee with Atul Chandra Gupta (1901-1906) as Chairman and Jatish Chandra Sengupta, the Principal of the College as the Secretary.

On April 17, 1951 the Organizing Committee called a General Meeting of the members. Of the 300 members (life and ordinary members) enrolled, 117 attended that meeting. It was chaired by Satinath Ray (1893-1898).