The CAG Cannot Audit Ram Mandir. Its Officer Is on the Trust.

What the CAG Told The Probe When We First Raised the Alarm

In November 2024, The Probe sent a detailed questionnaire to the then Comptroller and Auditor General of India, Girish Chandra Murmu, asking two pointed questions about a serving Indian Audit and Accounts Service (IA&AS) officer, Ashutosh Sharma, who held a position on the Construction Committee of the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust. First, had the CAG formally authorised this appointment? Second, if authorisation had been granted, under which specific regulations or guidelines was a serving government officer permitted to participate in a religious trust while discharging his official responsibilities?

The questions were not asked arbitrarily. They were rooted in Rule 15 of the Central Civil Services (Conduct) Rules, 1964 — the code of conduct that governs all central government servants, including IA&AS officers.

Rule 15(2) lists the specific categories of outside activity a government servant may undertake without prior government sanction. These include "honorary work of a social or charitable nature" under clause (a), and management of "a literary, scientific or charitable society" or a club for sports, cultural or recreational activities under clause (d). The list is exhaustive. A religious trust — established by the Government of India specifically to construct and manage a Hindu temple — does not fall within any of these permitted categories. Any engagement outside what Rule 15(2) specifically permits requires prior government sanction under Rule 15(1).

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What the CAG Said on Ram Mandir — and What It Did Not

The CAG's written response to The Probe, dated 14 November 2024, confirmed that the appointment had indeed been authorised. It stated: "At the request of the Chairman of the Construction Committee of Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust, which was created by Govt. of India, the Competent authority formally authorised Shri Ashutosh Sharma to the Construction Committee; he works purely on honorary basis in the Trust's committee."

However, the response did not name the competent authority that granted the sanction, nor did it cite the specific rule or clause under which the sanction was granted.

A DoPT Office Memorandum (OM) (No. 11013/5/88-Estt.(A) dated 11.07.1988), issued under Rule 15 of the Central Civil Services (Conduct) Rules, 1964 adds a further dimension. On the question of government servants and religious organisations, it states: "As regards participation in purely religious activities, the freedom to profess and practice any religion is guaranteed under the Constitution of India itself. Since, however, the Constitution of India is based on the principle of secular state, the Government servants, while they are free to profess and practice any religion in their private lives, should so conduct themselves in public as to leave no room for any impression to arise that they do not subscribe to the secular philosophy of the State."

The same OM places the burden of compliance squarely on the officer and the institution. It states: "The responsibility for the consequences of the decision to join any organisation and participating in its activities will rest with the employee himself. It is, therefore, the duty of the Government employee who wishes to join any organisation or association to satisfy himself that its activities and objectives are not of such a nature as are likely to attract action under any of the provisions of the Conduct Rules. In the circumstances, any plea of ignorance or misconception as to the Government's attitude regarding participation in the activities of such organisations would not be tenable."

In simple terms, the rules are clear: ignorance is not an excuse. It was Ashutosh Sharma's own responsibility to check whether joining the Ram Mandir Trust was permitted under the Conduct Rules before accepting the position. The CAG, as the institution that authorised the appointment, bears the same responsibility. Neither can now claim they did not know.

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A Second Problem — Even If You Accept the CAG's Explanation

But even accepting the CAG's response entirely at face value — that the Ram Mandir Trust was created by the government, that a competent authority formally authorised the appointment, and that Ashutosh Sharma served purely on an honorary basis — a separate and equally serious problem arises.

The land on which the Ram Mandir stands was not donated or privately purchased. It was acquired by the State under the Acquisition of Certain Area at Ayodhya Act, 1993, and subsequently vested in the Trust by the Central Government. Through gazette notification S.O. 568(E) dated 5 February 2020, the government directed that all rights, title and interest in the entire acquired area — including the inner and outer courtyard of the disputed site — shall vest in the Shri Ram Janmbhoomi Teerth Kshetra from the date of publication in the Official Gazette.

This is the fact that anchors the case for scrutiny. The Ram Mandir Trust's defenders argue that because the temple was built with voluntary public donations rather than money drawn from the Consolidated Fund, the CAG has no business examining its accounts. But that argument addresses only one half of the public-resource question. The construction may have been donation-funded, but the ground beneath it is public property — land compulsorily acquired by the State under a parliamentary statute and transferred to the Trust by government order. A body that holds, manages and develops publicly acquired land is not a purely private entity dealing only in private money. It is the custodian of a public asset, handed to it through a statutory process, for a public purpose.

That distinction matters for the audit question. The vesting of acquired land establishes precisely the kind of public-resource nexus that brings a body's affairs within the legitimate reach of public scrutiny — and it is the reason the demand for a CAG audit cannot be dismissed as a purely political one. 

Whether the formal trigger is invoked under Section 14 (1) of the CAG Act, on the question of government financing, or under Section 20 (1), through a Presidential reference, the legal pathways exist. What the land-vesting does is establish the public interest that justifies using them: a trust entrusted with public land and now handling thousands of crores in public donations is, by any reasonable standard, a matter the nation's supreme audit institution may legitimately examine.

These provisions are no longer abstract. As allegations of financial misappropriation at the Ram Mandir have mounted, calls for independent scrutiny have multiplied across the political spectrum. Some reports have claimed the diversion of devotee donations could exceed Rs 200 crore. 

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge has gone further, alleging the figure may be as high as Rs 5,000 crore — though that number is an unverified political claim, larger than the roughly Rs 3,500 crore in total donations the Ram Mandir Trust itself has reported since 2020, and appears to reach back to collections from earlier decades for which no public accounting has ever been placed on record.

The demand has now moved from political platforms into court. A public interest litigation before the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court has specifically sought a comprehensive CAG audit of the Trust's financial records, alongside a CBI probe. The petitioner, according to the plea, had earlier written directly to the CAG seeking intervention, but received no response. The legal pathway under Section 20(1) — a Presidential reference inviting the CAG to audit a body not otherwise within its remit — is precisely the mechanism such a demand would travel through. It exists, it is available, and the public-resource character of the Trust's holdings is what gives the demand its weight.

And here lies the contradiction at the heart of the matter. Even if the public interest is established, even if a Presidential reference is made, even if every legal pathway is found to be open — one question remains, and it is the question the CAG cannot answer cleanly. Can the CAG actually conduct such an audit? Can the nation's supreme audit institution independently examine the accounts of an entity whose own governance body includes one of its serving officers? The demand for a CAG audit assumes an auditor standing at arm's length from the audited. At the Shri Ram Janmbhoomi Teerth Kshetra, that distance does not exist.

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Who Is Ashutosh Sharma — and What Is He Doing on This Committee?

Ashutosh Sharma, a 1997-batch IA&AS officer currently serving as Principal Accountant General (Audit), Haryana, Chandigarh, remains listed to this day as a Member of the Construction Committee on the Trust's official website.

Which raises a question: what exactly does Sharma do as a member of the Construction Committee? The Trust's website offers no description of his responsibilities. The CAG's written response to The Probe in November 2024 said that he only "works purely on an honorary basis in the Trust's committee" — and nothing more. Is his role limited to advising on construction-related matters, as the committee's name might suggest? Or does it extend to financial oversight, governance, and the utilisation of funds?

His own credentials make the construction-advisory characterisation difficult to sustain. Sharma's basic qualification is an MBBS. His professional qualifications are an MBA, a CIA — Certified Internal Auditor — and a CISA — Certified Information Systems Auditor. There is nothing in his educational or professional background that relates to architecture, engineering, or infrastructure. Everything in his training and certification is financial and audit-oriented. His career bears this out: his postings include Director (IT Audit), Chief Auditor NDMC, and a string of international audit assignments in which the CAG deployed him as its representative for the external audit of global bodies — among them the World Health Organisation, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and United Nations entities — alongside membership of INTOSAI's IT-audit working groups. 

The CAG's own deployment history, in other words, treats Sharma as a senior audit and finance specialist, not a construction expert. A Certified Internal Auditor with an MBA, sitting on the committee of a trust managing thousands of crores in public donations, is not there to advise on brickwork.

His seniority at the time of appointment adds another dimension. Sharma's posting history, available on the government's IA&AS officer database, shows that he was listed on the Construction Committee while serving as Principal Director & Secretary to the C&AG of India — a headquarters post he held from March 2020 to July 2021, at the heart of the institution's administrative operations. He then rose, on 1 July 2021, to Director General & Secretary to the C&AG of India — one of the senior administrative posts in the institution and held it until 18 November 2024, all while remaining listed on the Construction Committee. 

He was subsequently posted as Director General (GST-II), and then, from April 2025, as Principal Accountant General (Audit), Haryana. This was not a junior field officer with a peripheral role. This was the administrative head of India's supreme audit institution, simultaneously listed as a member of the Construction Committee of a government-created religious trust managing donations that investigators now suspect may have been misappropriated to the tune of hundreds of crores.

The Construction Committee is chaired by Nripendra Mishra, a former Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, and includes retired IAS officers, a former Director General of the BSF, and a professor of architecture. It is a governance and oversight body, not merely a technical one. Sharma retires on 30 June 2032. He is not a retired officer with a fading association. Sharma is a serving CAG official with six years of service remaining, currently posted as Principal Accountant General (Audit), Haryana, Chandigarh — and as of June 23, 2026, his name remains on the Ram Mandir Trust's Construction Committee page.

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What the Donation Fraud Allegations Reveal

The controversy over the Ram Mandir's finances erupted publicly on June 7, 2026, when Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav alleged that crores of rupees in offerings made by devotees at the Ayodhya temple had been misappropriated. While Trust General Secretary Champat Rai immediately dismissed the claims, stating that internal audits had found "nothing noteworthy," the denial failed to hold.

What followed was a cascade of revelations that transformed the matter from a political allegation into an active criminal investigation.

According to media reports, internal audits conducted by the Trust's statutory auditor V. Sankar Aiyar and Co. and technology firm TCS had flagged severe cash-handling vulnerabilities. Separately, multiple reports confirmed that ten chest-boxes of gold and silver offerings were removed from the temple without corresponding accounting entries, and that CCTV footage covering seven to eight months from the cash-sorting area had been deleted.

On June 13, 2026, the UP government, at the direction of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, constituted a three-member SIT comprising Vijay Vishwas Pant, IAS, Divisional Commissioner, Lucknow; Kiran S., IPS, Inspector General of Police; and Neel Ratan, Special Secretary, Finance Department. The SIT was given 15 days to submit its final report.

According to reports, the SIT and investigating agencies have so far recovered nearly Rs 2 crore in unaccounted cash. Of this, Rs 10 lakh was seized by the Special Operations Group from the residence of counting staffer Lavkush Mishra — part of it concealed beneath a pile of cow dung. The SIT separately recovered an undisclosed quantity of gold from the residence of Ramshankar alias Tinnu Yadav, who is considered a close associate of Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust General Secretary Champat Rai.

On June 21, the SIT met Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and submitted its preliminary investigation report, briefing him on over 60 hours of investigation conducted over six days. The same day, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge alleged that approximately Rs 5,000 crore had been misused in connection with the Ram Temple. "There are reports that about Rs 5,000 crore has been misused. The priests are robbing the money. A loot has happened in the name of Ram," he said at a party convention in Bengaluru. Kharge's figure — larger than the Rs 3,500 crore in total donations the Trust itself has officially reported since its formation in 2020 — is an unverified political allegation. He appeared to be referring to collections dating back to L.K. Advani's Rath Yatra era, for which no public accounting has ever been placed on record.

No FIR, No Arrests — and No Independent Oversight

Notably, despite the recovery of approximately Rs 2 crore in cash and gold from individuals linked to the donation-counting process, no formal arrests have been made and no First Information Report has been registered in the case as of June 23, 2026. 

The absence of an FIR — which would bring the matter under judicial supervision — has drawn sharp criticism from across the political spectrum. AAP's Arvind Kejriwal, Congress MP Tariq Anwar, and Samajwadi Party's Akhilesh Yadav have all specifically demanded that an FIR be registered and formal arrests be made. The SIT, which reports directly to Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, has no obligation under its current mandate to register an FIR — a fact that critics say leaves the entire investigation without independent judicial oversight.

This is the vacuum the demand for a CAG audit is meant to fill. With no FIR yet, no judicial supervision, and an SIT answering to the very government that appoints the Trust's officials, the call for the Comptroller and Auditor General to step in has only grown louder. 

But that demand runs into the problem this story began with. The institution being asked to audit the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust still has one of its own serving officers listed on the Trust's Construction Committee. An audit is only as credible as the distance between the auditor and the audited. At the Ram Mandir Trust, that distance does not exist. Until it does, the CAG cannot answer the call for scrutiny without first turning the question on itself.

This story is part of The Probe's ongoing public interest coverage of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India. Related stories: "CAG: Stalled Audits, Alleged Political Bias Shake Constitutional Body" | "CAG: Allegations of Corruption, Cronyism and Cover-Up" | "CAG Officer Suspended: The Probe Impact"