Bhubaneswar: The audit-cum-inventorisation of the valuables kept in Ratna Bhandar of the Jagannath temple in Puri would begin from August with experts from Reserve Bank of India (RBI) playing a role in it, Odisha law minister Prithviraj Harichandan said on Tuesday.
On Monday, Arabinda Kumar Padhee, chief administrator of the Shree Jagannath Temple Administration had said that both the inner and the outer chambers of the sacred vault had undergone structural repairs under the supervision of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) over 95 days.
The repair and restoration work of the treasury had started in December last year, five months after it was opened and all the valuables shifted to a secure place for its audit.
The law minister said the inventory-related work would begin in August and a final decision in this regard will be taken at a high-level meeting sometime this week.
“A letter will also be sent to the RBI seeking two experts, who were earlier involved in inventory at Somnath Temple in Dwarka, as per the decision taken earlier,” he said, adding that new chests have been prepared to store the precious ornaments.
“The inventory of the valuables will include digital photography and cataloging with details such as their weight and make. Those will then be tallied with the 1978 inventory, put back in the chests and sealed.”
{{/usCountry}}“The inventory of the valuables will include digital photography and cataloging with details such as their weight and make. Those will then be tallied with the 1978 inventory, put back in the chests and sealed.”
{{/usCountry}}The last audit of the valuables kept in Ratna Bhandar, located in the northern side of the Jagamohan of Jagannath Temple, was carried out for 70 days between May 13, 1978 and July 23, 1978.
During the audit-cum-inventorisation, 454 gold articles including crown, necklaces, bracelets and anklets with a net weight of 128.38 kg and 293 silver articles weighing 221.53 kg were counted by the officials. Additionally, 14 items of gold and silver could not be weighed at the time and were not included in the 1978 list. The 1978 audit, which was done by jewellers, has not been made public.
Justice(retired) Biswanath Rath, who heads the inventorisation committee of the temple, said that though the law department is yet to officially inform him about the beginning of the audit, a standard operating procedure has been prepared.
According to Justice (retired) Rath, the government will select a team of experts, including goldsmiths and valuers, who can identify the types and nature of the jewellery.
“The RBI would provide the machine necessary to find out the purity of the gold and silver. We may not go for valuation of the jewellery and ornaments. But, our priority is to know the nature of the ornaments, their character, and the presence of diamonds, pearls, rubies and other precious stones. Compared to the 1978 audit, the current one would be more scientific as machines would be involved and the process would be video-graphed,” Rath said.
In the past, audit of valuables of major Indian temples have unearthed lapses by the management committees.
In 2011, the Supreme Court-appointed committee opened the vaults of Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Thiruvanthapuram, capital of Kerala, following a dispute over who should run the temple— the ruler of erstwhile Travancore Temple or the state government?. The Supreme Court in 2014 ruled that the royal family can manage the temple assets and properties and had found huge treasure of gold, silver and diamonds.
In 2011, a major archaeological report unearthed mismatches between inscriptional evidence of donations and the records concerning ornaments in the possession of Tirupati Tirumala Devasthanam following which the TTD catalogued its gold and silver coins in 2012 and 2013.
The mismatches between inscriptional evidence of the donations and the records-keeping procedures concerning the ornaments in the TTD’s possession – prompted interventions from the Supreme Court and the Chief Information Commission of Andhra Pradesh.
In the case of Puri temple, the opening of the treasury became a major issue during last year’s assembly elections, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) highlighting the “disappearance” of the treasury key in 2018. From Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Union home minister Amit Shah, the BJP leaders raised the slogan of “Odia Asmita” (Odia pride) to oust the Bjiu Janata Dal (BJD) government ahead of the last assembly elections, and in its manifesto, promised an audit and inventorisation of the treasury, if voted to power.