Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis Mahavidyalaya, Baranagar (formerly Bonhoogly College of Cominerce) was established in 1965 as a private evening Commerce College affiliated to the West Bengal State University (WBSU). A brief history of the college is as follows :

The idea of an evening Commerce College, dream of many educated persons of the Baranagar-Kamarhati area, became reality through untiring efforts of a few educationalists and persons interested in education and social development. Public donations and charities on the one hand and voluntary services rendered by teachers of the college on the other hand the driving forces for the college to go ahead and grow.

The area where the college is situated, though adjacent to Kolkata, is a part of the greater Baranagar-Kamarhati Industrial Belt of West Bengal. There was no evening Commerce College in the vast area from Tallah to Barrackpore (a linear distance of about 20 kilometers) inhabitated by over 25 lacs. of people. The area has also the highest concentration of uprooted (refugees) people of which a sizeable number belong to Scheduled Castes community.