Puri: In a significant development, district administration officials Wednesday found the keys of the inner chamber of the Ratna Bhandar (treasure room) from the district record room here.
“Two special teams of the district administration led by additional collector Bibhuti Bhusan Das Wednesday found a sealed envelope containing keys of the Ratna Bhandar’s inner chamber from the district record room during a search operation,” Collector Aravind Agrawal told media here.
According to Agrawal, the red-coloured envelope has a sticker that read ‘duplicate key of inner Ratna Bhandar’. “We can know the number of keys only after the opening of the envelope. We have informed the incident to Shree Jagannath Temple Administration (SJTA),” Agrawal said.
He stated that the SJTA had asked him April 2 to collect the keys of the inner chamber of Ratna Bhandar from the district treasury. However, officials of the district treasury could not find the keys. “We informed the SJTA that there was no key in the district treasury April 4,” Agrawal claimed.
According to him, the district administration had constituted two teams to search for the missing keys after the SJTA wrote to it to launch a fresh search May 24. “We engaged a total of nine officials to search for the keys in the district treasury, the record room and the Nazirkhana. The officials found the envelope containing the keys after a thorough search,” Agrawal said.
Wednesday’s revelation has created a fresh controversy over the keys. As per the Shree Jagannath Temple Act 1960, the SJTA is bound to deposit the keys of inner chamber of Ratna Bhandar with the district treasury.
“The state government should order a probe to ascertain how keys of the inner Ratna Bhandar were deposited in the district record room and not in the district treasury. Moreover, there is no trace of the original keys yet,” said an observer.
It is worth mentioning that a team of experts had examined the structural status of Ratnabhandar April 4 in accordance with an Orissa High Court order. However, the panel did not open the inner chamber. They only examined the inner chamber through a grille-like door. Subsequently, it was revealed that the SJTA did not have the keys of the inner chamber.
A major controversy had erupted over the missing Ratna Bhandar keys with a massive public outrage forcing the state government to order a judicial inquiry into the circumstances leading to the keys going missing.
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