MVA (Maha Vikas Aghadi) alliance partners have been given control of important temple trusts in Maharashtra in what appears to be an attempt to facilitate secular loot of Hindu temples. Three prominent temple trust postings have been distributed to each of the three alliance partners.

As per reports, the Siddhi Vinayak Temple Trust, Mumbai chairman post has been given to Shiv Sena while Shirdi Sai Baba Temple Trust chairman has given to NCP and Congress will get Vittal Rukhamai Temple Trust, Pandharpur chairman post and other three alliance partners will share the respective trust members.

The 300-350 crores rupees revenue Shirdi Trust is set to pass into the hands of NCP that was competing with Congress for its control. The party has appointed its MLA Ashutosh Kale as the Shirdi Trust’s chairman. Shirdi Temple Trust was earlier under the Congress that will now hold sway over the important Pandharpur Vittal Rukhami Temple trust.

Congress MLA Praniti Shinde will possibly be appointed as the chairman of this trust as per available information. Shiv Sena, in the meanwhile, has appointed actor-politician Adesh Bhandekar as Mumbai’s Siddhivinayak Trust chairman.

Significantly, there is a tussle between MVA alliance partners with regard to the appointment of chairpersons to important bodies such as CIDCO, Mhada, etc. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior Congress minister in the MVA government said “There is lots of confusion among us over allocations of these co-operations. We had several meetings over this issue but no meeting reached a conclusion. We are still discussing various posts allocations but no decision yet”.

However, all these appointments are just a means to get hold of the revenue generated by them, particularly Hindu temples. There have been several instances in the past when corruption and mismanagement of temple funds by politicians have come to the fore.

Earlier, three trustees of the Shirdi Saibaba Sansthan Trust belonging to the then NCP-Congress alliance were under the scanner for misappropriation of funds. The three – K. C. Pandey, Captain Suresh Vasudeva, and Urmila Jadhav – were also charged for cheating the trust by submitting fake travel bills of Rs 1.67 lakh between 2004-2007.

In another instance, Manoj Pradhan of NCP was booked over allegations of misappropriating INR 3.22 crores of Vajreshwari temple in Thane district. In any case, how can Hindus trust those who wanted to appropriate temple gold? Considering the history of how Hindu temple funds have been looted and mismanaged by secular governments, this looks like just another vasooli scheme of the MVA government.

(Featured Image Source: Freepress Journal)

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