Under khaki cloak, Vadtal gadi gets a new acharya

Watched by a heavy police guard, Rakeshprasad Pande, 36, took charge as the acharya of the Vadtal gadi of the influential Swaminarayan sect ...

Watched by a heavy police guard, Rakeshprasad Pande, 36, took charge as the acharya of the Vadtal gadi of the influential Swaminarayan sect on Friday.

About 100 policemen, including half a dozen sub-inspectors, were posted in the village to avert possible showdown between two groups of the sect which have been at loggerheads for some years now. Police said the temple authorities had sought deployment to keep the peace. The change in guard was necessitated by a Thursday order of the Gujarat High Court. Pande claims lineage from the original Swaminarayan Acharya’s fourth descendant.

The change of guard is the culmination of long-standing rivalry between the Acharya group (the descendants of the original acharya and their followers) and the Dev group (temple committee). Since 1984 the gadi had been with Ajendraprasad.

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However, after the gruesome murder in May 1998 of another sant, Gadadharanandji, the chairman of Shri Laxminarayan Dev Trust which controls the properties of temples spread in India and abroad, trouble between the two groups intensified.

Ajendraprasad was a suspect in the murder, but his name did not figure in the chargesheet.

The temple committee had accused Ajendraprasad of interfering in the temple administration and alleged that he did not credit to the trust gifts and donations worth lakhs that he received.

In May 2002, a Satsang Mahasabha organised by the Dev group at Sarangpur adopted a resolution declaring Ajendraprasad padbhrashta. The Dev group maintained that the Acharya had stopped giving diksha or performing other duties like Murti Pranpratistha. Armed with the resolution, the Dev Group approached the lower court in Nadiad and got an interim order restraining Ajendraprasad from functioning as the acharya.

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