The Digvijay Singh regime seems determined to needle the RSS-BJP by forcibly acquiring temple land (wherever possible) either directly in its possession or owned by its supporters.
With the row over the RSS-owned eight-bigha stretch near Ujjain's Mahakaal temple still raging, Madhya Pradesh BJP president Kailash Joshi has now sought the formal intercession of Congress president Sonia Gandhi on the long-standing controversy over the Sri Ram Temple Trust, land at Gurubux ki Talliyya in Bhopal. In a letter to Ms Gandhi, the state BJP chief has accused the Bhopal District Congress of actually garbing the land to build ifs office. This, he observed, was tantamount to playing with the religious sentiments of the majority community. “The matter thus needs your immediate attention,” he wrote. The land, 4.90 lakh sq feet of it, was acquired by the trust 155 year ago. The deed passed through the hands of several mahants in the trust before being put through a fresh survey between 1918 and 1923, when Bhopal was a riyasat. The land was divided into 14 survey numbers. Situated here today is a garden, a pucca well and a temple, Though renovation on the temple began in 1974, when Mr P.C. Sethi was chief minister, his successors showed no interest either in removing the encroachments or compensating the trust for misuse of the property over the years.
The nazul (land record officer) granted a no-objection certificate following a popular public campaign in 1991-92 to free the property from encroachers, Mr Joshi wrote. Building permission was subsequently given by the Bhopal Municipal Corporation. Even the survey conducted by the local police station confirmed the trust's control over the land.
However, attempts by mischief mongers
(in cahoots with the powers that be) to prevent the rightful owners from
exercising control over the property continued.