The Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha MP Mahua Moitra said the Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath planned to use the Ayodhya Ram temple donation theft as a plank to win the upcoming 2027 Assembly polls in the state.
“Yogi ji is playing good cop, bad cop. Yogi ji is saying he was unaware of what was going on. He promises to get to the bottom of this. When the 2027 elections come, Yogi ji will say RSS is bad, VHP is bad. He will say I am Yogi ji, vote for me. He plans to comeback with this in the front,” Moitra said addressing a news conference in Delhi.
“How can Yogi ji say I was not aware? The district magistrate of Faizabad is an ex-officio trustee. UP principal secretary is a trustee. Nripendra Mishra (former principal secretary to the government of India) is a trustee,” the Krishnanagar MP added.
The Ayodhya Ram temple trust had on Monday accepted the resignations of general secretary Champat Rai and trust member Anil Mishra.
“When the theft was discovered why wasn’t an FIR registered? Is it (resignations of the two trust members) enough? When over Rs. 700 crore – we don’t even know the exact numbers, it could be Rs. 1,000 crore- of the theft has been discovered,” she said. “How can the president of the trust, treasurer of the trust not have cheque signing authority?
“The Ram temple trust is no ordinary trust. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced the trust in Parliament himself in February 2020. The notification of the trust was issued by the ministry of home affairs,” Moitra said.
Moitra said four of the 15-members of the trust were ex-officio members, central and state government employees, and the remaining members were appointed by the RSS, Viswa Hindu Parishad and other Sangh related outfits.
The Trinamool MP claimed not the trust president Nitya Gopal Das, but Champat Rai and Mishra had the authority to sign cheques.
“This was the first irregularity. This is a private trust. When have we ever heard of a private trust set up with public donations? Why is it a private trust? It was announced by the Prime Minister, notified by the home ministry and funds collected from the public,” she said.
Moitra alleged the trust was made private to keep it out of the ambit of the Right to Information Act (RTI).
She said applications for information on the trust made via RTI and even to the central information commissioner were denied and two whistleblowers who flagged wrongdoings in the trust were sacked.
“The central information commissioner informed the petitioner, the details of the trust are so secretive and so sensitive that it could cause damage and endanger lives it was to come out. So we have no information on the trust,” she said.
Moitra said the eight persons arrested in connection with the theft are “small fry.”
Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate had on Monday posted on X that Bajrang Lal Bagra, who was brought to replace Champat Rai, was accused of corruption by the central vigilance commission and was removed as chairman and managing director of the public sector company National Aluminium Company limited (NALCO).
“Nobody knows what happened to the SIT report that the trust itself had formed,” said Kirti Azad, Trinamool MP from Bardhaman-Durgapur. “They have played with the sentiments of the people. The funds donated by the people have been stolen. The same has happened in Kedarnath-Badrinath. The RSS-VHP has occupied every temple in India. All the members of the trust should have resigned.”