By Raju Vernekar
Mumbai, May 16
Former Maharashtra Chief Minister and senior Congress leader Prithviraj Chavan is receiving flak from Hindu priests for suggesting the government should borrow gold from religious trust, for combating the economic crunch of the country due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
On Wednesday, Chavan expressed his views on Twitter about ‘appropriate’ usage of the gold lying with religious trusts in case of “‘emergency”. He said that the country has estimated Rs.76 lakh crore ($1 Trillion) worth of gold lying with the sacred trusts, suggesting that the government should seize the gold at a return bid of 1 or 2 % interest, that can be spent on the lower middle and poor class to increase their spending capacity.
However Swami Paramhamns, Tapaswi Chhawni in a video message said that ”Before taking gold from Hindu temples, money should be taken to combat Coronavirus from Congress leaders who have amassed huge wealth since independence,”. He also branded the Congress leaders as ‘anti-national’ and questioned Chavan for not seeking to borrow money “from mosques and churches” but Hindu trusts.
Former Mahant of Kashi Vishwanath temple (Uttar Pradesh) Dr Kulpati Tiwari said that Chavan has lost his mental balance and as such a life long ban will be imposed on him and his family by the Kashi Vishwanath temple. The priests of other 12 “Jyotirlings” in the country should also impose a similar ban on him, he said and added that no Government takes anything donated to temple by devotees. In 1983 a theft had occurred in Kashi Vishwanath temple and that time the Congress was ruling at the centre. As such the Congress must have played active role in that theft, he alleged.
Ramesh Shinde, spokesperson of “Hindu Janjagruti Samiti”, alleged that the Congress has been imposing ‘anti-Hindu’ policies for the last 70 years, and that the party has looted massive public money in the form of scams. Similarly former BJP Lok Sabha MP Kirit Somaiya lashed out at Chavan and tweeted a video, alleging whether the demand was made by Chavan on behalf of Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Congress-ruled state government leaders.
Sensing aggravation on his statement, Chavan later tweeted that his suggestion of gold monetisation was not a new one. The Gold Deposit Scheme (GDS) was started back in 1999 by the Vajpayee govt after the fallout of economic sanctions, post- 1998 Pokhran Atomic tests. The same scheme was later renamed as “Gold Monetisation Scheme” by the Modi government in 2015. “According to a finance ministry report, 20,547 kg of gold has been mobilised by 2,952 entities between November 2015 and January 2020 under the scheme and two temples from Maharashtra have deposited their gold with 11 banks,”.
Earlier this week, Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD)(Andhra Pradesh) Chairman YS Subba Reddy had told the media that the trust will not be using gold deposits in the bank, despite the recent loss of Rs.400 crore in revenue and shall use other reserves to pay employees’ salaries and take care of expenses for maintenance of the temple. The reserves rule out the gold deposits in the bank, stating that it will not be touched in any scenario, quoting that gold deposits hold ‘sentimental issues’. The world’s richest temple is reported to have nine tonnes of gold reserve and Rs,14,000 crore fixed deposits in various banks. Some of the richest temples of the country that hold billions of reserves in various banks include Padmanabhaswamy temple in Kerala, Shirdi Sai Baba Shrine (Ahmednagar, Maharashtra) and Siddhivinayak temple in Mumbai (Maharashtra) and Kashi Vishwanath temple(UP).
