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PRIME MINISTER Narendra Modi was elected as the chairman of the Shree Somnath Trust (SST), the religious charitable trust which owns and manages the iconic Somnath temple near Veraval , for five years on Monday after the charity commissioner of Gujarat recently approved an amendment to the deed of the trust. With the amendment, the tenure of the SST chairman will be five years instead of one, trustees said.
At the 122nd meeting of the SST’s board of trustees convened at Raj Bhavan in Gandhinagar on Monday, PM Modi, the incumbent chairman of the board, was re-elected as the chairman for a five-year term, an official release said.
This is the first time in the 74-year-long history of Shree Somnath Trust that the chairman of the board of trust has been elected for a five-year term. So far, the term of the chairman has been one year.
“The board of trustees had proposed an amendment to the trust deed to make the tenure of the chairman five years instead of the existing one year. The matter was pending with the office of the charity commissioner of Junagadh for a long time. It had raised some queries in between which were addressed. Eventually, the charity commissioner approved the amendment recently. Hence, the tenure of the chairman will be five years instead of one year and in that light, the election of Narendrabhai (Modi) as the chairman for the next five years is a routine procedure,” PK Laheri, former chief secretary of Gujarat, who is a trustee of the STT, told The Indian Express.
PM Modi has been elected the chairman of the SST board of trustees for the third time. He was elected chairman for the first time in 2021 after the post had fallen vacant due to the death of then-incumbent chairman Keshubhai Patel in 2020. Gujarat ex-CM Keshubhai had been serving as the SST chairman since 2004.
The Trust has been led by politicians. The state government and Centre can nominate four trustees each on the board of trustees of SST. Currently, Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP veteran LK Advani are among six trustees. Laheri, JD Parmar, a retired professor of Sanskrit, and industrialist Harshvardhan Neotia, chairman of Ambuja Neotia Group, are the other trustees. Two posts are lying vacant. After Morarji Desai, Modi is the second PM to head the Trust. Modi was nominated as a member of the board of trustees of SST in December 2010.
On Monday, Modi also released SST’s video prepared under Centre’s “Meri Mitti Mera Desh” campaign. The clip showcases the heritage of the Somnath temple.
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