A walking encyclopedia of all things Ayodhya, Champat Rai’s appointment as General Secretary of the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Tirth Kshetra Trust in 2020 was a reward for his commitment to the cause of Ram Temple.
On Friday, he reportedly resigned from his post after investigators probing allegations of embezzlement of donations to the temple arrested a former aide.
Before this apparent downfall, the 79-year-old Bijnor-born Ray had become Ayodhya’s ultimate insider, in touch with all the eminent masters and familiar with various aspects of the temple city, according to people familiar with his career.
The journey began as a lecturer of Chemistry at RSM Degree College in Dhampur, Bijnor. In 1977, when the Emergency was in force, he was arrested at his college while giving a lecture to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh; He was imprisoned for 18 months. After his release, he left teaching and joined the VHP in 1980.
Read also | Ram Mandir donation case: Who are the eight arrested? From the trust assistant to the cash counting staff
He became a close aide of the then VHP president Ashok Singhal and was deputed to Awadh district to mobilize youth for the Ram Janmabhoomi movement.
He strengthened the Sangh network in Agra, Dehradun and Haridwar, with Ayodhya becoming its center of gravity. Those who worked with him in the 1980s and 1990s call him the “Encyclopedia of Ayodhya”. He knew its alleys, its issues, and its property records. When Ram Janmabhoomi’s estate suit reached the courts, Rai became the man the lawyers turned to.
He provided documents, traced revenue maps, and reconstructed oral histories. As a result, the title of “Keeper of Ram Lalla’s Record” stuck.
In the 1980s, he was a second-tier leader of the Ram temple movement.
He also had close contacts with BJP leaders across generations. On December 6, 1992, he was among the karsevaks in Ayodhya when the Babri Mosque was demolished.
The CBI mentioned him in the indictment for criminal conspiracy. Nearly three decades later, in September 2020, a Lucknow court acquitted him and all the other accused.
When the Supreme Court delivered its ruling on the title suit on November 9, 2019, paving the way for the construction of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, Ray’s decades of work placed him at the heart of the new structure.
He became the chief operating officer of the Ram Temple project.
From the bhoomi pujan on August 5, 2020, to the grand opening on January 22, 2024, Champat Rai was the main man, almost the de facto head of the trust, as Mahant Nritya Gopal Das, the chairman of the trust, was ill.
During the construction of the Ram Temple, Rai briefed the media on the progress of work, scanned the design files, and coordinated with engineers from Larsen & Toubro.
In 2021, he led the nationwide Nidhi Samarpan Abhiyan, a fundraising campaign that the foundation says it has raised over more than a year. $2000 crores for the temple.
Two years after the temple’s dedication, Rai was again in the spotlight after a Samajwadi Party leader claimed that donations had been siphoned off from the temple’s offerings. It remains to be seen whether this represents the culmination of his association with Ayodhya.
