Congress Leader Digvijaya Singh to March From Ujjain to Ayodhya to Protest Embezzlement Case
New Delhi: Senior Congress leader and former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Digvijaya Singh said on Friday (July 3) that he will march from Ujjain to Ayodhya on foot to protest the alleged embezzlement of donations from the Ram Mandir.
“I will begin a foot march from Ujjain to Ayodhya on October 2. This will be apolitical. No party flags will be [flown] in it. Anyone who has faith in lord Ram and has donated to the Ram Mandir can participate,” Singh told mediapersons in Bhopal.
Singh also said he will move the courts asking that his donations to the Ram Mandir be returned in light of the alleged embezzlement, for which he blamed the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Vishva Hindu Parishad.
He said he'd made a donation during the Ram Janmabhoomi movement in 1990 and also gave some Rs 1.11 lakh after the Supreme Court in 2019 greenlit the Mandir's construction on the same spot where Hindutvavadis had razed the Babri Masjid.
But the alleged embezzlement of donations at the temple amounts to “an attack on our faith in lord Ram”, the 79-year-old said. He has decided to move a court in Ayodhya and demand that his donations be returned, Singh said, adding that he would deposit the money into one ‘Ramalaya Trust’.
After allegations surfaced early last month that donations to the Ram Mandir worth crores of rupees had been stolen, the Uttar Pradesh police 19 days later on June 26 arrested eight people, mostly involved in counting cash and other valuables gifted to the temple, whom it accused in the case.
Temple trust general secretary and international vice president of the Vishva Hindu Parishad Champati Rai, and trustee Anil Mishra, neither of whom are named in the FIR, have offered to resign.
The prosecution officer who spoke to the media about the eight accused's arrest last week had said at the time that the authorities recovered almost Rs 80 lakh from seven of them.
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