A Division Bench of the Andhra Pradesh High Court consisting of Chief Justice Arup Kumar Goswami and Justice N. Jayasurya dashed Sanchaita Gajapathi Raju’s hopes to take back control of the MANSAS Trust from P. Ashok Gajapathi Raju by rejecting the writ appeals filed by her against the order by Justice M. Venkata Ramana that the senior TDP leader should be restored as the trust chairman. With this, Mr. Ashok has the line cleared for him to continue as chairman of the historic trust.
According to reliable sources, the court refused to grant an interim relief of suspension of the single-judge order on the ground that Mr. Ashok had already taken charge after the judgment. The court also dismissed a petition filed by Urmila Gajapathi Raju, daughter of Mr. Ashok ’s brother Ananda Gajapathi Raju, wherein she staked claim to be appointed chairperson of the MANSAS Trust.
It was in June this year that Justice Venkata Ramana struck down G.O. Ms. Nos 72 and 74, through which Ms. Sanchaita was appointed as hereditary trustee/chairperson of the MANSAS (Maharaja Alak Narayan Society of Arts & Science) Trust and Sri Varaha Lakshmi Narasimha Vari Devasthanam at Simhachalam, and ordered that Mr. Ashok Gajapathi Raju should be reinstated as chairman of both the trusts.
Mr. Ashok had argued in his petitions that the established practice in the Simhachalam Devasthanam had been for the “eldest male lineal descendant” of the Pusapati Gajapathi family of the princely State of Vizianagaram to be the hereditary trustee and it was in vogue for more than three centuries and continued even after the temple came under the purview of the Madras Endowment Act of 1951 and subsequently Acts 17 of 1966 and 30 of 1987 of Andhra Pradesh.
