Orissa HC Adjourns Hearing on PIL Seeking Tabling of Puri Jagannath Temple Missing Keys Inquiry

The Orissa High Court has adjourned the hearing for another two weeks on a PIL requesting the tabling of Justice Raghubir Das Commission of Enquiry report on the missing keys of Puri Jagannath Temple ‘Ratna Bhandar’ in the state Assembly.

A bench led by Chief Justice Chakradhari Sharan Singh adjourned the hearing after the state government requested two more weeks to file an affidavit in response to the PIL, filed by a Puri-based resident in 2023. Dilip Kumar Baral had approached the High Court seeking its intervention as the state government had “failed” to make the enquiry commission report public.

The Justice Raghubir Das Commission of Enquiry was established by the state government on June 6, 2018, to investigate the circumstances surrounding the missing keys of Lord Jagannath’s treasury called ‘Ratna Bhandar’ at Puri temple. Justice Das submitted his report to the Odisha government on November 29, 2018, but the state government has not presented the report on the floor of the state Assembly.

The state government reportedly expended around Rs 23 lakh for the Commission of Enquiry, Baral noted in his petition, stating that the people of the state are kept uninformed about the findings of the Commission of Enquiry report. In its initial hearing, the High Court in April last year had directed the state government to file its counter in an affidavit within two months regarding the current status of the enquiry report.