Qaisar Mansoor
Shriram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust general secretary Champat Rai accused by opposition leaders of buying a piece of land worth Rs2 crore at an inflated price of Rs 18.5 crore for the Ram temple premises with help from Trust’s member Anil Mishra.
The Indian political parties raised the issue of alleged corruption in a land purchase deal by the Ram Janmabhoomi Trust for the Ram temple in Ayodhya. These opposition parties have demanded a high-level inquiry into the alleged financial irregularities. Members of BJP are complicit in corrupt dealings which has delayed the construction of the temple.
Aam Aadmi Party leader Sanjay Singh and Samajwadi Party member Pawan Pandey held separate press briefings where they levelled serious corruption charges.
A piece of land valued at Rs 5.8 crore was first bought by two persons, Sultan Ansari and Ravi Mohan Tiwari, at Rs 2 crore. The land was then sold a few minutes later to the Ram Janmabhoomi Trust at a price of Rs 18.5 crore. The land is 12,080 square metres in size.
It is pertinent to mention here that “How does the price of a land increase in just a few minutes,” that Rs 17 crore was transferred through real-time gross settlement, or RTGS, which allows instantaneous money transfer. “Why was the land valued at Rs 2 crore bought for Rs 18.5 crore?”
The papers on the sale deed of the land and the registry have the same witnesses – Anil Mishra, a member of the trust, and Ayodhya Mayor Rishikesh Upadhyay. Singh also said that the stamp for the deed for the second deal (in which the land was sold to the trust) was bought before Sultan and Tiwari purchased the land at Rs 2 crore.
While the stamp paper for the second deal was bought at 5.11 pm, the stamp paper for the first deal was purchased at 5.22 pm. “In any Trust, a proposal is passed before any land is bought,” he said. “How did the Ram Janmabhoomi Trust pass the proposal in just five minutes and buy the land?”
Singh alleged that the Trust has duped citizens by collecting money in the name of deity Ram and asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to order Central Bureau of Investigation or Enforcement Directorate level inquiry into the alleged corruption.
“No one can imagine that anyone would engage in corruption in his [Ram’s] name,” Singh said.
The Ram temple is coming up at the site where the 400 years old Babri Masjid was demolished in 1992 by Hindutva extremists who were mobilised under the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Ram Janmabhoomi movement. In November 2019, the Supreme Court in a landmark judgement held the demolition was illegal but handed over the land to government-run trust for the construction of a Ram temple. In August 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone for the temple.
Positioning himself as the “Chowkidar” of the wealth of the nation, Narendra Modi had famously said “Na khaunga, na khane dunga” after becoming Prime Minister. But all his promises to curb corruption stand exposed, as a recently-conducted study proves. The study reveals that corruption has not only increased during Modi’s tenure, but most of the people in the country also believe that Modi is not serious about fighting corruption.
