Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijay Singh today said land records of the area with the RSS near Mahakaleshwar temple in Ujjain shows it was marked as government land between 1931-1988. A controversy has been brewing on over handing of the land by the RSS to the temple trust for security reasons. It erupted over the RSS reportedly demanding compensation of Rs 25 crore for the 9 lakh sq ft of land near the temple, which is one of the 12 jyotirlingas. ‘‘Were the RSS leaders sleeping all these 57 years?,’’ Singh asked while talking with newspersons at the Dumna airfield here. The Chief Minister had written to RSS chief K.S. Sudarshan to get the land released from the Sangh’s possession free of cost. Singh had said RSS did not purchase the land but had got right to it through an appeal filed in a civil court. The government had wanted the RSS unit at Ujjain to hand over the land to the temple trust for security and other reasons in view of the simhastha parva mela next year. Regarding the state BJP organising general secretary Kaptan Singh Solanki’s suggestion that the local trust and RSS could deal with the matter, the Chief Minister said the trust wants the land ‘‘permanently’’ and asked whether Solanki was a spokesperson of BJP or of the RSS.
