Former Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the current Ram Janmabhoomi Temple Construction Committee chairman Nripendra Misra has laid serious allegations against the current Ram Mandir Management, accusing them of siphoning off funds and donations meant for the temple. Misra has called for the entire management to be sacked, an investigation to be started and for actual professionals to be hired for the job.
Serious lapses have been found in respect to following established rules and procedures and major discrepancies in accounting of temple donations. Some reports claim that over 7 crores are misaccounted for, with some claiming even higher amounts. The controversy led to investigations and money was found from a temple employees house, triggering a chain reaction of political upheaval. The UP government constituted a three-member Special Investigation Team (SIT) to examine donation registers, vault records and CCTV footage. The Ramjanmabhoomi Trust maintains it in innocent and no money has been misaccounted for.
“No Professionalism”
“I am very hurt, especially because it is at, at the time when I am almost concluding the assignment for temple construction,” he told India Today TV. The temples current system relies on volunteers rather than a neatly defined work outline. The employees in the management are informally and verbally told about their duties and no written records/procedures exist. It is a serious lack of professionalism in perhaps the country’s biggest and most famous temple.
More than 1500 employees are employed at the temple and donations worth crores are recieved every day. Clearly defined accounts and framework is need of the hour.
“This incident is certainly a challenge to the faith of devotees and hurt them. At the same time, it is a question mark for all the different wings of the management system,” he said.
Misra claims that in the older documents he had studied, from 2023 and 2025, there was a clearly defined SOP that was not followed by the employees.
“Cash and Valuables poorly handled”
Cash, gold, silver, jewellery, etc is donated into the temple donation boxes everyday and employees manually check them. This is a serious oversight according to Misra, who claims there are serious lapses in counting of these valuables.
“When a woman stands before the deity and donates her jewellery, she removes her ring or ornament and drops it into the donation box out of pure faith. When those boxes are emptied for counting, currency notes, coins and precious metals all come out together,” he said.
“I believe there were serious shortcomings in accounting for all three categories,” he added.
“The supervision itself was weak. Two representatives from the bank and two from the trust were supposed to oversee the process, but the supervision was entirely informal,” he said.
“Political Upheaval”
This entire saga has charged UP’s political environment, with the opposition already claiming that crores of rupees are missing amd have called for the courts to take matters into their own hands.
BJP MP’s too have called for a fair investigation and that the donations of all kinds should be publicly disclosed and transparency should be utmost priority.
UP CM Yogi Adityanath has urged the people to act maturely and not believe in baseless rumours. A fair and just investigation will take place and the perpetrators will not be spared.
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