Donation row: Ram Mandir Trust to decide today on Champat Rai, Anil Mishra resignations

THe Shri pound Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra combine testament receive in Ayodhya on mon to decide on the resignations of Trust general secretary Champat Rai and trustee Anil Kumar Mishra in connection with the Ram Mandir donation theft case, with key administrative decisions also expected to be taken.The meeting will begin at 3pm at the Yatri Suvidha Kendra in the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi complex. Trust members are expected to attend either in person or virtually.Trustees Jagadguru Shankaracharya Swami Vasudevanand Saraswati, Yugpurush Swami Parmanand and Krishnamohan have already reached Ayodhya for the meeting.Treasurer Govind Dev Giri, Nripendra Misra and Swami Vishwaprasannatirth are also expected to arrive in Ayodhya before the meeting begins.Senior advocate and trustee K Parasaran, along with some other members, will participate virtually.Trustee Mahant Dhinendra Das, who is based in Ayodhya, left for Gujarat on Monday to visit his ailing guru and will attend the meeting online.The Trust’s ex-officio members representing the Uttar Pradesh government - Ayodhya district magistrate Shashank Tripathi and additional chief secretary (home) Sanjay Prasad - will attend the meeting in person. The Centre’s representative, Union home ministry additional secretary Prashant Lokhande, is expected to join virtually.In the wake of the donation theft controversy, the Trust is also expected to take key decisions on the management of the Ram Mandir. There is also speculation that new office-bearers could be inducted into the Trust.The alleged donation theft first came to the notice of Trust members in the first week of June and entered the public domain on June 27.Following the revelations, the Uttar Pradesh government constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) on June 13 at the Trust’s request.After the preliminary investigation, eight people have been arrested so far, all members of the Ram Mandir cash-counting team.Those arrested are Anukalp Mishra, Lavkush Mishra, Ram Shankar Yadav alias Tinnu, Manish Yadav, Subhash Srivastava, Avinash Shukla, Rama Shankar Mishra and Karunesh Pandey.Anukalp Mishra and Lavkush Mishra are related to each other and also to trustee Anil Mishra, who resigned last week along with Champat Rai. Ram Shankar Yadav, an aide of Rai, and Manish Yadav are also related.So far, the Ayodhya police have seized ₹79,85,493 from the eight accused, recovering cash from bathrooms, haystacks and cow dung cakes.When the Trust was constituted on February 5, 2020, it had 15 members - four ex-officio members and 11 others.Among the 11, Kameshwar Chaupal and Vimlendra Mohan Pratap Mishra died in February and August 2025, respectively.Krishna Mohan, a retired Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer, was appointed in place of Kameshwar Chaupal in September 2025. Vimlendra Mohan Pratap Mishra’s position remains vacant.