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Six more disciples oppose sale of two plots inside Osho commune in Pune

As recently reported by The Indian Express, Osho International Foundation, the owner of Osho Commune, sought the permission of the charity commissioner’s office to sell the two plots because of “financial distress”.

The two plots of land that are sought to be sold, each about 1.5 acres in size, sit inside Osho Meditation Resort in Koregaon Park, and house a swimming pool and a tennis court as of now. (Twitter: @Teensthack)

Six More disciples of Osho Rajneesh have moved an application before the charity commissioner’s office in Mumbai seeking to be heard in a matter involving the sale of two plots of land inside the sprawling Osho commune in Pune.

As recently reported by The Indian Express, Osho International Foundation, the owner of Osho Commune, sought the permission of the charity commissioner’s office to sell the two plots because of “financial distress”.

Two disciples of Osho, however, objected to the sale and asked to be made “intervenors” in the case. The charity commissioner’s office allowed their application to be heard.

Now, six more disciples have moved a similar application, which too has been allowed by the charity commissioner. They will be heard on March 25. In their application, the disciples – Kashmira Mody, Ramkrishna Reddy, Sanjay Patel, Ravinder Singh, Ram Doulatani and Hemant Malik – have pleaded that they have a right to be heard because they have “interests in the activities of the commune” and have contributed money and volunteer services in its activities.

Malik, one of the intervenors, said, “I have been associated with the commune for 30 years… I can’t tolerate the attempts being made to sell commune property because it has come into being through the sweat and toil of all disciples and our guru.

The two plots of land that are sought to be sold, each about 1.5 acres in size, sit inside Osho Meditation Resort in Koregaon Park, and house a swimming pool and a tennis court as of now. Osho International Foundation, which is based in Switzerland, has decided to sell the two plots to Rajeev Bajaj, managing director and CEO of Bajaj Auto, who lives on an adjacent plot, after he offered the highest price, over Rs 100 crore, in an auction in which two others also made a bid.

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In their application before the charity commissioner’s office, the disciples have argued that the commune was not just a piece of real estate but the “living energy” of Osho.

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“Osho disciples from all over the world have worked, donated and created this beautiful place called Osho ashram,” they said.

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Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades.   Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were  asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died.     Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More


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