Aurangabad, March 19:
The Aurangabad bench of Bombay High Court has directed to appoint an IAS officer as the chief executive officer (CEO) of Sai Baba Sansthan at Shirdi. A bench of Justice S V Gangapurwala and Justice S D Kulkarni also disqualified the appointment of the current CEO Kanhuraj Bagate. An assurance was given to the bench by the state government that a board of trustees would be appointed on the Sansthan within two months.
Bagate was promoted as an IAS officer as per the inter-department promotions at the time of his appointment as CEO of the Sansthan. He was not a direct IAS officer through UPSC examination. Therefore, his appointment is in violation of the order of the High Court and the Supreme Court, the bench said. Uttamrao Shelke, a former trustee of the organization, had filed a PIL seeking the appointment of a new board of trustees. The bench had on October 9, 2019, constituted an ad hoc committee comprising the Chief Judicial Magistrate of Ahmednagar, CEO of Saibaba Sansthan, additional divisional commissioner of Nashik and joint-charity commissioner of Ahmednagar to take strategic and financial decisions. This committee has been in charge of the Sansthan since October 2019 and is taking policy and financial decisions with the permission of the bench. A civil application was filed on behalf of the petitioners seeking the appointment of an IAS as CEO. Adv Satish Talekar, Pragya Talekar and Ajinkya Kale acted on behalf of the petitioners.