Durga Prasad Yadav, a senior journalist based in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, India tells Arun Sinha, journalist and writer, in an interview about the extraordinary powers three men – Champat Rai, general secretary, Anil Mishra, trustee and Gopal Rao, special invitee to the Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust – exercised in the management and administration of the Ram temple. He says if anyone is to blame for the temple donation theft and the bad name this has brought to the temple in Ayodhya, it is this trio who behaved like kings.
Nothing moved without the permission of Rai, Mishra and Rao, Yadav alleged, adding that they misappropriated the donations given to the temple trust and used the funds to buy land and properties at artificially low rates from local residents and farmers, ostensibly to expand the area where the temple is situated and build new roads. The trio and their cronies razed more than 200 old temples that were located in the vicinity of the Ram temple.
Top civil servants and government officials would regularly visit them. They had more powers than the elected representatives to the state legislative assembly and Parliament. They shut access to the media; they held no press conferences. Journalist Yadav said in the interview that the trust that manages the temple is controlled by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological parent of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Rai, Mishra and Rao were from the RSS and could act in an arbitrary and high-handed manner because they were protected by the Narendra Modi government in New Delhi.
