Last Friday, two devotees donated gold worth `60 lakh to the Sai Baba temple in Shirdi, taking the total gold held by the temple trust to 280 kg. The temple also reportedly holds 3,000 kg of silver.
The devotion of Shirdi Sai Baba’s swelling ranks of followers, which often manifests itself in the form of generous gifts, is beyond doubt.
So is the evidence of heavy political hands grabbing at the reins of the Sai Baba Sansthan, the trust that controls the temple and its riches.
The Shirdi temple is third in the list of India’s richest temples, after the Padmanabhaswamy temple in Kerala and the Tirupati Balaji temple in Andhra Pradesh. It’s annual income, according to the Trust’s report for 2010-11, was `209 crore. Of this, `120 crore was collected in cash and kind from donations put in charity boxes.
In 2004-05, the Trust had received `31.10 crore donations in charity boxes. Total donations received by the trust in 2004-05 were `40.65 crore. These figures are a testament to how popular the temple has grown in the last seven to eight years. The assets in 2010-11 stood at an astounding `992.22 crore. It had investments worth `529 crore, and jewellery worth `39.48 crore.
The riches of this famous pilgrim centre have been used by politicians, who manage it to support their bids to launch, regain or consolidate political careers.
A series of public interest litigations filed in the Bombay high court have brought to light some instances of this. The Trust bought medicines and surgical instruments worth `3.8 crore for its super-specialty hospital during the period 2005-2012. The purchases were made from Surgilink and Health Care medical shops at Shrirampur and Transasia, a medical store in Pune. All of these medical shops belong Yogesh Sasane, who is a cousin of the Trust’s managing committee chairman Jayant Sasane. Mr Jayant Sasane was a Congress MLA from the Shrirampur constituency for two terms, before the constituency was reserved for the scheduled castes in 2009.
During his tenure as trust chairman, which started in 2004, Mr Jayant Sasane sanctioned the construction of roads from Shirdi to Shrirampur, Belapur and Shani Shingnapur. The committee sanctioned `28.11 crore for the construction of these roads that fall within the Shrirampur constituency.
The committee also sanctioned `1.12 crore for the construction of a main road at Kopargaon.
“All these roads had nothing to do with the Shirdi Sansthan,” said Sanjay Kale, a Sai Baba devotee, who was one of the petitioners in a PIL. In another instance cited in one of the PILs, the trust sanctioned `10 crore to the Ahmednagar zilla parishad’s primary schools.
The zilla parishad brought benches worth `10 crore, of which `2.5 crore was spent in buying benches for primary schools in the Rahata constituency represented by the Congress’ Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil, one of the Trust’s managing committee members.
According to the rules framed by the Trust’s scrutiny committee, financial assistance to any institution from the Trust should not exceed 30 per cent of the total estimated cost of the project or `50 lakh, whichever is lower. The Trust’s managing committee sanctioned `10 crore for the purchase of benches contrary to the guidelines provided by the scrutiny committee.
Moreover, the Trust also donated `1.25 crore for conducting professional certificate courses with the help of Pravara Rural Education Society and other institutions. Mr Vikhe Patil is the director, his father is chairman and his brother is a secretary of the education society. However, Mr Jayant Sasane denied the allegations.
“We will reply to all the allegations in the court,” he said.
Taking note of all this, on March 13, the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay high court dissolved the Trust’s managing committee that had been appointed by the state government.
Except for the chief executive officer Kishor More, the remaining 14 members were associated with either the Congress or the NCP. The committee was initially appointed for a tenure of three years in 2004, but continued to function up to 2012.
The HC directed the government to formulate rules for the appointment of management committee members and make new appointments accordingly within 15 days. Although the government has till date not framed any rules, on the eve of the HC’s deadline, the principal secretary of the law and judiciary department signed the order appointing a new 15-member board of trustees.
Three days after the appointment of the new management committee, the Aurangabad bench of the HC on March 30 stayed the appointment, and asked the government to frame the rules for the appointments first.
“God is not a fiefdom of the ruling coalition...keep God away while distributing public largesse,” the HC observed, while staying the new appointments.
However, Mr Jayant Sasane is confident that the new committee will be able to continue its work after the government forms rules. “The HC has not dissolved the new committee, it has just stayed its appointment, as the government had not formed rules for appointments on it,” he said.
Now, a three-member panel comprising the Ahmednagar collector, the district judge and the chief executive officer of the Sansthan, is managing the affairs of the Trust. However, the HC has also directed the panel against taking any major financial decision regarding the management of the affairs of the Trust without intimating the court.