Up until now it was all talk; the trust is now on to action, and has asked UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to put an SIT on the case of these so-called missing funds. As of Saturday, officials say the government has done just that, forming a panel to make a final end of what has become a rather heated political matter.
SIT move seeks to safeguard credibility
When you are an institution built on the faith of the people, any cloud over the money is a bad thing. So the trust’s call for a proper inquiry is a change of tune – they’re no longer just talking back to the naysayers but putting themselves out there to be checked. It’s about regaining trust by having an outside pair of eyes on how the finances are run.
They have been standing by their methods up to this point. “We are in the middle of internal audits with the SBI and we haven’t found anything to write home about,” said general secretary Champat Rai. Then you have Mahant Dinendra Das of the trust, who will tell you the books are open and every decision is on record.
How the row gathered momentum
Things came to a head after Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav made a big deal out of it, saying crores of rupees from the faithful have vanished. He called it ‘utterly shameful’ and put the onus on the government to do something, or he would go to court.
Yadav ratcheted up the pressure when the trust first made a statement, which he wrote off as a ‘verbal formality’. He wanted the trustees to put the CCTV tapes and the ledgers in front of the public. That kind of rhetoric left the trust with little choice but to ask for a top-tier police probe.
State response and who will investigate
The state says the SIT was set up at the behest of the Chief Minister once the trust made its case. Their job is to get to the bottom of the allegations surrounding the trust’s money in Ayodhya.
Here is the makeup of the three-man team:
– Vijay Vishwas Pant, IAS, Divisional Commissioner, Lucknow
– Kiran S, IPS, Inspector General of Police
– Neel Ratan, Special Secretary, Finance Department
Political crosscurrents add pressure
You had to know other party leaders would get in on it. Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, an ex-BJP MP, said he knew of some shenanigans but wouldn’t be drawn on the specifics. Rajneesh Singh, a senior in the party, even put in a letter to PM Modi for a full accounting of the trust’s assets, accounts and land deals.
The Congress is calling for a separate investigation. Their man in the state, Ajay Rai, wants a high court judge to head it up. On the other side, minister Surya Pratap Shahi says the trust has an inquiry of its own and is following its own rules, since it’s really their domain.
What devotees want to know
Put aside the posturing and there is one thing on everyone’s mind: what was done with the cash, the gold and the rest? People on all sides are saying those who give should be told where it went.
So here is where we stand:
– The trust has asked for an SIT to have a look
– The state has given them a three-member panel
– The opposition is looking for the courts to step in
What comes next
Now that the SIT is in the field, they will be going over the numbers, as per the plan. Nripendra Mishra, who runs the construction side of things, has put some distance between himself and the money talk, saying his hands are only on the building work.
It’s a simple equation: find out the truth, win back some trust and keep the project from being a football in the political arena. A good, no-nonsense probe should tell us how fast we can get there.
