LUCKNOW: The Shree Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Trust has entrusted corporate giant Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) with the management of its funds that have crossed Rs 3,000 crore. TCS is believed to be developing an accounting software for the purpose.
The handover of the management of funds has been initiated in the wake of controversies kicked up over the land deals by the trust. The temple trust general secretary Champat Rai has confirmed the takeover.
According to highly placed sources, the RSS had called three key trust members to Mumbai for a closed-door meeting over the controversial land deals. After the meeting, the move to hand over the accounts to a professional firm was initiated.
TCS has set up its accounts office at Ramghat near Ramjanmabhoomi and is scheduled to come out with the accounting software by December and begin digitisation and management of trust accounts. IT experts from the Tata Group recently gave a presentation of the software to temple construction committee chairman Nripendra Mishra.
Temple trust secretary Champat Rai said the trust’s requirements were discussed with TCS software experts, who are now installing an accounting system. “TCS will digitise and manage our accounts from December,” he said.
It may be recalled that as the trust coffers began to swell during the VHP crowdfunding campaign for the Ram temple construction, the trust website was hacked and a fake portal to siphon off funds was created. Fraudsters also cloned cheques of the temple trust's bank account and withdrew large sums of money after the PSU bank's clearing house repeatedly failed to connect to the trust secretary for a final nod before the debit. After botched fund management, the trust got embroiled in court cases over allegations of corruption in land deals, including purchase of nazul land and temples.
Temple trust member Anil Mishra said that the team of chartered accountants would continue to maintain accounts of the income and expenses of the temple trust.