The state government may bring in a bill in the legislature’s monsoon session to bring the Shirdi Sai Baba Temple Sansthan under its control. The state has been forced to bring in a bill after Governor Dr Mohammed Fazal sent back an ordinance, says sources.

The Shirdi temple trust has been in the eye of a controversy since 2002 after a drama at its social gathering was reported in the newspapers and became a huge issue in the Legislative Council. The then minister of state Manikrao Thakre assured the enraged members of the House that the state government would suspend the board of trustees.

“But the government realised afterwards that it did not have powers to do so since the Shirdi trust was a private one unlike the Siddhivinayak Mandir Trust or the Pandharpur Vitthal Temple trust.

It was a tedious process for the state: the Charity Commissioner must launch an inquiry, formulate charges, ensure hearings and then suspend the board after adequate proof were found that charges were grave enough. The commissioner did issue a show-cause notice on some petty charges in July 2002.

We challenged the notice in High Court, where the court was convinced there were malafide intentions and ordered to transfer the case to the Joint Charity Commissioner.

It also gave an order in October 2002 that, should the inquiry go against the trustees, the decision to suspend the Board must come four weeks after so that we had time to make an appeal,” sources in the trust said.

Therefore, the state planned to promulgate an ordinance to bring the trust under state  control. A proposal was approved by the Cabinet in the last days of Vilasrao  Deshmukh’s tenure as CM. But before the ordinance was sent to the governor, Deshmukh had to resign and the proposal lapsed.

The ordinance was given a new lease of life in May and sent to the governor for acceptance, but according to sources, it was sent back with the governor asking the government to enact a bill in the monsoon session.

As a result, the state may bring in a bill some time next week to wrest control from the present board of directors.

It is believed that two senior politicians from Nagar district, where the Shirdi temple is located, are behind the move as they feel they have been repeatedly slighted by the trust. “We ignored their feelers to accommodate their people in jobs and did not grant donations to their institutions, which may have angered them,” a trustee said.

Trust’s annual turnover is Rs 80 crore The annual turnover of the trust is close to Rs 80 crore with most of the income coming from donations and interest on the deposits. Although the interest rates have dropped in recent years, the accumulated savings are close to Rs 160 crore.