Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS) pun­dits who in­di­cat­ed last week their in­ten­tion to take le­gal ac­tion against the or­gan­i­sa­tion, say they would sup­port the men they seek to re­move if they are de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly re­in­stat­ed.

In a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter is­sued on Wednes­day, at­tor­ney Vashist Ma­haraj, who is rep­re­sent­ing the group, claimed that they in­tend to chal­lenge Kr­ish­na Ram­bal­ly and Vi­jay Ma­haraj, the son of for­mer long-stand­ing SDMS sec­re­tary gen­er­al Sat­narayan Ma­haraj, who they claim are wrong­ly pur­port­ing to hold the po­si­tions of pres­i­dent gen­er­al and sec­re­tary gen­er­al re­spec­tive­ly.

In the 11-page let­ter, the pun­dits claimed that Ram­bal­ly and Ma­haraj as­sumed to po­si­tions af­ter for­mer SDMS pres­i­dent-gen­er­al Utham Ma­haraj passed away on No­vem­ber 29, 2018, and Vi­jay Ma­haraj’s fa­ther passed away al­most a year lat­er.

“What we are say­ing is the Ma­ha Sab­ha op­er­ates un­der a con­sti­tu­tion. It is not a cow. You see if you have a cow you could give that cow to your son and say be­ta you milk the cow, take the cow, and you sell it and make how much mon­ey you want from it. The Ma­ha Sab­ha can­not be passed from fa­ther to son,” Pun­dit Satyanand Ma­haraj of Aranguez ex­pressed dur­ing a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day at the De­vi Mandir, Vyas Hin­du Com­plex. He along with oth­er pun­dits and their at­tor­ney con­tend­ed the SDMS con­sti­tu­tion was not ad­hered to when fill­ing these po­si­tions.

The pun­dits’ are call­ing for the men to step down from their po­si­tions and ad­here to their con­sti­tu­tion. Pun­dit Khem­raj Vyas said at the con­fer­ence that they would sup­port who­ev­er takes up the po­si­tions once it was done con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly, even if Ma­haraj and Ram­bal­ly were to be re­turned.

“What­ev­er is done con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly- and I make a pledge here...that at the end of this strug­gle- if these same peo­ple who we pledge to re­move from of­fices, if they are con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly placed in those po­si­tions I would sup­port them 10,000 per cent,” he said.

Clar­i­fy­ing mis­con­cep­tions, their at­tor­ney ex­plained that they were not af­ter the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

“We have no de­sire to bring down Ma­ha Sab­ha. We all from our fam­i­ly back­grounds and per­son­al records want to make Ma­ha Sab­ha in­to a stronger or­gan­i­sa­tion,” he said.

The SDMS is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly who told Guardian Me­dia, “It (the pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter) is er­ro­neous in terms of its fac­tu­al con­tent so the analy­sis they would have as­cribed to the law, the in­ter­pre­ta­tion these claimants are giv­ing to the con­sti­tu­tion of the Ma­ha Sab­ha is mis­con­ceived.”

He al­so said that they would re­spond to the let­ter “in due course” as they are ob­lig­at­ed un­der the laws of the Supreme Court.

The let­ter was sent to the SDMS heads on March 4 and they have 28 days from then to re­spond.