Ram Temple Donation Row No Rules Manual For 1500 Trust Employees

Amid SIT probe into the Ram temple donation theft controversy, questions are now being raised as to why the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Khetra Trust did not frame rules or a manual for appointing around 1500 employees and paying their salaries, even though rules and a manual exist for appointing priests.

“Like manuals for priests, what service rules were framed for the rest of the employees and fixation of their salary?” asked a Trust employee who did not wish to be named.

“Several crores must have been spent on wages of 1,500 employees. Details of income-expenditure along with revenue expense and assets under separate heads were presented in meetings, which the trustees kept approving. However, the question of service rules for these employees was never raised,” he added.

The religious committee of Ram temple, chaired by trust treasurer Govind Dev Giri, has already framed a manual for about a dozen priests.

Some people associated with the trust have raised the question whether character verification of employees working in the Ram temple complex was done by police before their appointment, according to the person quoted above.

The increasing influence of Ram Shankar Yadav ‘Tinnu’, one of the eight men arrested in the case—from a sevadar (volunteer) to a powerful person in temple management and a trusted aide of Champat Rai—went unnoticed even by the trustees, he said.

In the last six years, about two dozen meetings of the 15-member executive committee of the trust were mandatorily held every fourth month. Almost all executive committee members attended the meetings physically or virtually.

Pawan Dixit has been a journalist for over a decade. He has extensively covered eastern UP for around five years, covered 2012 UP assembly polls, 2014 Lok Sabha polls while being stationed in Varanasi. Now, in Lucknow, he covers outstation political assignments, reports special cases from district court, high court and state information commissionRead More