Apologise, Hindu Aikya Vedi tells MLA

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: With speculations rising over the worth of the assets discovered from the secret vaults of Sree Padmanabha Temple, opinions are also sprouting about what to do with the huge cache of wealth discovered.Hindu Aikya Vedi has openly come out against the proposal of certain sections to use the wealth for public welfare. The comment made by Jameela Prakasam MLA that the wealth found in the temple belongs to the public is unacceptable, said  Aikya Vedi district working president P Jyothindra Kumar in a statement here on Saturday. Jameela Prakasam, while speaking in the Assembly, had said that the indiscriminate taxation practised by the erstwhile rulers of Travancore had contributed to this amassment of wealth. She even said that the valuable items, which belong to the State, should be transferred and stored in banks. The Vedi demanded an immediate apology from Jameela Prakasam and alleged that there might be the involvement of  vested interests behind these sort of statements. The wealth stored in the secret vaults of the temple belongs to the Lord Padmanabha, which was part of the offerings from the devotees and the royal family, it said. The matters relating to the use of the wealth should be decided by the devotees, spiritual leaders and Hindu society, they added. Dr Purushothama Bharathi, a PhD holder in Economics and State president of the Kerala Lottery  Agents’ Association, has urged that the wealth, especially gold worth thousands of crores, should be used to generate an extra income that can be used for the development of the Temple and the Hindu community. The true value of the assets should be calculated  and the gold should be kept as collateral in the Reserve Bank for issuing currency. The interest acquired from lending loans can be used for the welfare of the temple, devotees and  the general public, he said. Several other religious bodies and social organisations have made it clear that the wealth recovered from the Temple belongs to Lord Padmanabha and it should be preserved in the temple itself. “The wealth belongs to the Temple and the Temple belongs to the royal family. The decision of the Government to preserve the wealth in the Temple is laudable,” said  Chamackal Rajappan, secretary of the Kerala Social  Service Sanghom.