‘Gave a Silver Shila Weighing 500 Grams, Never Got a Receipt’: Mahant Bal Yogi Ramdas Slams Ram Mandir Trust

Ayodhya (Uttar Pradesh): “I had given a silver shila (bar) weighing 500 grams, received from a bhakt in Kanpur, to the heir of Mahant Nritya Gopal Das, Mahant Kamal Nayan Das. We never got a receipt nor asked for one, though it was covered by newspapers. Now the entire country has come to know about the 200 kg silver as well, so this game has been going on for quite some time,” said Bal Yogi Ramdas, mahant (head priest) of Ayodhya-based Kartalia Ashram, while talking to The Wire.

Nritya Gopal Das is the chairman of the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust which has convened a meeting of all its members today at Das’s math in Ayodhya against the backdrop of the ongoing controversy over the alleged Ram Mandir fund theft. 

In this image, Bal Yogi Ramdas, mahant (head priest) of Ayodhya-based Kartalia Ashram is seen with former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav. Photo: Akanksha Kumar.

Bal Yogi Ramdas, who took over as the mahant of Ayodhya’s Kartalia Ashram in April 2024, is known for his proximity to Samajwadi Party (SP) supremo and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, and had publicly endorsed the SP during the 2017 assembly elections in the state.

In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, after the SP won the Ayodhya-Faizabad constituency, Bal Yogi Ramdas had gone to the SP’s Lucknow office, and gifted Yadav a framed photograph of the Ram Lalla idol.

On the investigation being conducted by the Special Investigation Team (SIT), constituted by the Adityanath government on June 13, 2026, Mahant Bal Yogi Ramdas told The Wire, “We have earlier demanded from both the Union government as well as the state government that a high-level judicial inquiry be conducted in this matter since it’s a question of the faith of 140 crore people in this country.”

Also read: Politic | Temple Theft: Political Loyalty Above Morality

“Only those eight persons who were putting rubber bands (referring to segregation of cash), counting it, and earning salaries between Rs 10,000 and Rs 20,000 have been sent to jail. Whitewashing the entire incident by targeting such low-level employees won’t be enough. Since chief minister Adityanath has already assured ‘doodh ka doodh aur paani ka paani’ (the facts will emerge), we do hope that information related to gold and silver donations is shared in the public domain,” he added.

The 200 kg silver donation mentioned by Bal Yogi Ramdas here refers to claims by Raju Manwani of Vishwa Sindhi Sena Sangam that no receipt was issued in lieu of bricks donated to the trust in 2021.

In an interview to The Wire, when asked why no receipt had been issued till date, Manwani said, “At that time [in 2021] we were told that receipt will be issued after the quality check of the silver bricks was completed. We did follow-up for a couple of months in 2021 regarding the same but when there was no response, we let it be.” 

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