Government can take control of mosques and churches in Maharashtra, Minister assured to consider the suggestion of Assembly Speaker Rahul Narvekar, Mahayuti govt of Maharashtra could take control of masjids mosques and church

Nagpur. If the Mahayuti government in Maharashtra implements the opinion of Assembly Speaker Rahul Narvekar, it may heat up the politics of the state as well as the country. Maharashtra Assembly Speaker Rahul Narvekar has suggested to the Devendra Fadnavis led state government that it can also take control of mosques and churches. Jaikumar Rawal, a minister in the Fadnavis government, has also assured Assembly Speaker Rahul Narvekar to consider this matter. Assembly Speaker Narvekar suggested the state's Mahayuti government to take control of mosques and churches when the Devendra Fadnavis government introduced the self-styled Siddhivinayak Temple Trust (Prabhadevi) Amendment Bill in the Maharashtra Assembly.

During the discussion on the bill, Rahul Narvekar suggested the Maharashtra government that it should think of applying the same principle to other religions as per the Constitution. Maharashtra Assembly Speaker got the bill voted on and it was passed. With the passing of this bill, the tenure of Siddhivinayak Temple Trust located at Prabhadevi has been extended to 5 years. Earlier it was 3 years. With this, there is now a provision for formation of a president, a treasurer and a committee in the temple trust. The number of all these has been kept at 15. The responsibility of the trust to be formed through the Siddhivinayak Temple Amendment Bill will be to implement the schemes, effectively manage the trust and provide facilities to the devotees. Currently, Sada Sarvankar of Shiv Sena is the president of this trust and Acharya Pawan Tripathi, vice president of Mumbai BJP, is the treasurer. Uddhav Thackeray's Shiv Sena-UBT has demanded that members of opposition parties should also be kept in the trust.

This is the first bill passed by the Mahayuti government in Maharashtra after coming to power. Also, if the government decides to take control of mosques and churches, this will happen for the first time in the country. BJP, which was part of the grand alliance government of Maharashtra, had won 132 seats in the assembly elections. Whereas, Eknath Shinde's Shiv Sena won 57 seats and Ajit Pawar's NCP won 41 seats. At the same time, in the opposition Mahavikas Aghadi, Shiv Sena could get only 20 seats, Congress 16 and Sharad Pawar's NCP could get only 10 seats.