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Kerala Rajya Sabha MP and CPI(M) parliamentary party leader John Brittas has written to Union Home Minister Amit Shah, urging the Union government to reconsider its position on whether the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust should fall under the ambit of the Right to Information (RTI) Act.
In his letter, dated Saturday, July 4, Brittas asked the government to revisit the stand it had taken before the court and present a revised position to the High Court. He said this would enable an authoritative judicial determination on the Trust's accountability under the RTI Act.
The letter comes amid allegations of theft and misappropriation of cash offerings, involving millions of rupees, made by devotees at the Ayodhya Ram temple. Following the allegations, the Uttar Pradesh government constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT), resulting in the arrest of eight individuals. The controversy has also renewed calls for greater financial transparency from the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust, which manages the temple.
In his letter, Brittas questioned whether a Trust established through a Union government-approved scheme pursuant to a Supreme Court judgment, and charged with managing property assigned to it by the Union government, could be kept entirely outside the public accountability framework outlined in the RTI Act.
He noted that the Union government had framed the Trust's governing scheme, constituted it through a Gazette notification, vested it with land acquired under the Acquisition of Certain Area at Ayodhya Act, 1993, and determined its initial composition, with 12 of its 15 members initially nominated by the Union government. "The legal existence of the Trust is, therefore, inseparably linked with governmental action undertaken under statutory authority," the letter states.
Brittas further pointed out that, throughout the proceedings, the Ministry of Home Affairs had consistently maintained that the Union government had formulated the scheme, constituted the Trust, and acted as its settlor in accordance with the Supreme Court’s judgment. Having accepted these foundational facts, he argued, it was necessary to reconsider whether the government could simultaneously contend that the Trust was not constituted by the government for the purposes of Section 2(h) of the RTI Act.
The CPI(M) MP also argued that extending the RTI Act to the Trust would concern only its administrative and financial functioning, including governance, contracts, and utilisation of donations, and would not interfere with its religious autonomy. He cited the example of the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board to argue that transparency and institutional autonomy can coexist.
“The Modi government cannot have it both ways. It constituted the Shri Ram Janmbhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust through a government-approved Scheme, vested in it land acquired under a Parliamentary law, nominated serving IAS officers as government representatives to its governing framework, and claims that the government has no role in it and the Trust is beyond the purview of the RTI Act. Transparency cannot become a casualty merely because the government chooses to describe a Trust as “autonomous”,” Brittas wrote on X, while sharing his letter.
Earlier, Communist Party of India (CPI) Rajya Sabha MP P Sandosh Kumar had also written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeking a comprehensive audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) and an independent judicial inquiry into alleged irregularities involving the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust.
