4 min readNew DelhiJul 20, 2026 05:20 AM IST
THE FINAL report of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) constituted by the Uttar Pradesh Government to probe allegations of donation theft at the Ram temple in Ayodhya points to clear evidence of administrative and supervisory lapses, even though the siphoning off of money was restricted to lower level staffers, and the scale limited to this group.
According to sources, standard operating procedures with regard to the counting room operations were not followed, and unqualified people were hired for operations. This was accentuated by supervisory lapses which enabled embezzlement, the source said.
The final report is ready, the source said, adding that the Supreme Court would be updated on July 20.
Among the likely suggestions for the future are the need to strengthen CCTV surveillance of donation room operations, commensurate backup in the form of hard-disk storage capacity to record visuals from higher-resolution cameras, introduction of frisking during entry and exit to areas where donations are handled, specified overalls for earmarked personnel, alongside specific accountability of those responsible for oversight.
The need to bar random, outsourced personnel from handling donations and bringing in professional staff without any connections or allegiance to the top brass is likely among the suggestions, the sources said.
The panel’s widened remit of inquiry went beyond just probing the alleged theft to identifying systemic shortcomings in the temple’s donation management system, which is part of the final report. “Apart from cash counting, a process has been instituted to record every artefact that’s come in, weigh it and make a register entry to ensure that this kind of a system stays in place for the future,” the source said.
“Institutional deficiencies enabled these operations to go on undetected over a period of time. But it needs to be kept in mind that this (Ayodhya temple) is just a two-year-old establishment, as compared to the administrators of the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams, who have decades of experience. The culpability here is prima facie restricted to the operational staff at the lower levels, but there can always be a question regarding why those kinds of people were hired and placed in these crucial operations. That is where the management has to take the blame, apart from letting these people go about their jobs in a relatively unsupervised manner,” the source said.
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The SIT, comprising Lucknow Divisional Commissioner Vijay Vishwas Pant, Inspector General of Police (Lucknow range) Kiran S and UP Government’s Special Secretary (Finance) Neel Ratan, was constituted on June 13 to investigate allegations that cash donations offered by devotees at the Ram temple were siphoned off during the counting process.
The panel submitted its preliminary report to the state government on June 23, which led to FIRs being registered by the Ayodhya police two days later against eight accused – all of whom were subsequently arrested and remanded to judicial custody. “There was administrative negligence in hiring some of these people and putting them in charge of the counting-room operations. But does the scope of these thefts go beyond these lower level people? There isn’t much evidence of that,” the source said.
What is undeniable, though, is there is culpability in terms of how this motley group was hired in the first place, and put in charge of operations, without adequate supervisory checks or clearly laid down procedures, the source said. There is an element of sycophancy in the selection of these people, which now needs to be addressed by hiring only qualified professionals to crucial roles, the source added.