Demand intensifies for opening Ratna Bhandar

Bhubaneswar: The demand for opening the treasury of Jagannath temple intensified a day after State Law Minister Jagannath Saraka said on Saturday that he did not know whether the Ratna Bhandar key is missing.

Former minister Bijoy Mohapatra asked how can the Law Minister say he is unaware of the missing Ratna Bhandar key. The government itself had stated that the Ratna Bhandar key is missing. Later, it was claimed that a duplicate key of the treasury of Jagannath temple was found, Mohapatra said.

Odisha government is only a custodian of Ratna Bhandar, it is not the owner. A devotee had donated gold ornaments worth Rs 3 crore in 2021 and people have the right to know about its utilisation, he said. People should know whether the Lord’s ornaments are safe and that the Ratna Bhandar needs to be opened for this purpose, Mohapatra said.

Senior Congress leader and MLA Tara Prasad Bahinipati said the Law Minister’s statement implies that the government is not serious over the issue. Seeking to know whether the Ratna Bhandar property is safe, he said the State government must take a decision on opening the treasury of the Lord at the earliest.

Earlier, former State BJP president Samir Mohanty had filed a PIL in the Orissa High Court seeking its direction to the government to open the Ratna Bhandar to carry out necessary repair works and conduct a fresh inventory of the ornaments of the deities stored there since long. Last month, Puri Gajapati Dibyasingha Deb had told the media that the Ratna Bhandar was in bad shape as cracks had developed in its inner wall and rainwater was seeping through it.