Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government on Tuesday reconstituted the Shree Jagannath Temple Managing Committee (SJTMC) by nominating 10 members to the governing body of the 12th-century shrine in Puri.
While the titular king of Puri, Gajapati Maharaja Dibyasingha Deb, serves as the committee’s permanent chairperson, the other members include former Comptroller and Auditor General of India Girish Chandra Murmu and Chartered Accountant A K Sabat.
A former IAS officer of Gujarat cadre, Murmu served as Principal Secretary to Narendra Modi when he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat and also as the first Lieutenant Governor of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir.
Siddheswar Mohapatra (representing Mukti Mandap), Krushna Chandra Sarmantray, Madhusudan Singhari, Jagannath Pujapanda, Ganesh Dasmohapatra, Ramnarayan Gochhikar, and Raghubir Das Maharaj of Balaramkot Matha (representing Mutts and religious institutions) have also been nominated to the panel, along with Mahesh Kumar Sahoo, a resident of Bantala in Angul district, according to the notification issued by the Law Department.
The appointments have been made under the provisions of the Shree Jagannath Temple Act, 1954 (Odisha Act 11 of 1955), paving the way for the long-pending inventory of Ratna Bhandar.
Notably, the term of the last governing body had ended on September 3, 2024.
