Bhopal: The Madhya Pradesh high court on Monday sought a reply from the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government on its decision to grant minister status to five religious leaders.
The high court’s Indore bench, comprising Justices P.K. Jaiswal and S.K. Awasthi, issued a notice to the MP government seeking its reply on the matter within three weeks.
The notice was issued by the court in response to a PIL filed by one Rambahadur Verma of Indore.
The petition sought to know on what basis the five spiritual leaders were accorded status of minister of state by the MP government.
The petitioner said the expenditures on facilities provided to the five babas would ultimately have to be borne by tax-payers.
The move to grant minister status to the five religious leaders had invited scathing criticism from both Opposition Congress and ruling BJP.
While Congress dubbed it a “poll gimmick”, senior BJP leader and former chief minister Babulal Gaur quipped, “It (giving minister status to the five sadhus) is the eighth wonder of the world since the saints neither applied for the party membership nor contested any elections, but secured minister of state status”.
The move has sparked a controversy since it came close on the heels of two of the five religious leaders who were given minister status had earlier declared to launch a 45-day statewide campaign to expose corruption in plantation of six crore saplings along the bank of river Narmada during the “Narmada Seva Yatra” programme of the chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan last year.
The five religious leaders who were given minister of state status were Compute Baba, Bhaiyyuji Maharaj, Narmadanand Maharaj, Hariharnand Maharaj, and Yogendra Mahant.
