Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav on Sunday urged the Yogi Adityanath government not to eye the wealth of temples as he posted on social media a news clip stating that only some utensils and a silver umbrella were found in the treasure trove of the Banke Bihari shrine in Vrindavan, Mathura.

“I pray to the government with folded hands to spare the wealth of the temples. So much greed is not good,” the former chief minister wrote on X.

The BJP government in Uttar Pradesh had formed a committee to open the treasury that stayed shut for 54 years.

The priests of the temple had demanded that the opening of the strongroom on Saturday be livestreamed but the government had turned down the proposal, drawing allegations that it was trying to conceal the “valuable recoveries”.

“We don’t believe that nothing valuable was found there. A large number of devotees used to drop valuable offerings to Lord Krishna through an opening on the door of the strongroom. The government is not telling us the truth,” Ashok Goswami, a priest, had told reporters on Saturday evening.

The Banke Bihari temple is considered the main shrine of Krishna in Vrindavan, where he had spent his childhood.

Some priests of the temple were opposed to the opening of the two-room vault as they believed it was god’s wish to keep the offerings of the devotees a secret. They had moved the court against the state government’s decision to open the treasury. The government had approached the Supreme Court and got an order to form a committee to take decisions about the temple. The committee decided to open the trove on Saturday.

Mathura district magistrate C.P. Singh said: “The entire exercise was videographed and a list of the items recovered was prepared by a chartered accountant from Delhi. We couldn’t complete the search in a day and so one more room was opened on Sunday.”

However, sources said nothing remarkable was found in the second room as well.

Prahlad Ballabh Goswami, a local historian, claimed that the temple was built in 1864 and the treasure trove was last opened in 1971.

“There was a huge quantity of gold jewellery in it. They were put in a box and deposited with the Bhuteshwar branch of the State Bank of India in the town,” he was quoted as saying.

“A hole was created in the wall of the trove after it was locked 54 years ago. Devotees could drop the offerings through it,” he added.