New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been elected as the chairman of the Shree Somnath Trust (SST), a religious charitable trust which owns and manages the iconic Somnath temple near Veraval, for a five-year term.
Previously, the chairman’s term was one year. However, after the charity commissioner of Gujarat recently approved an amendment to the deed of the trust, the tenure of the SST chairman will now be five years, the Indian Express reported.
This marks the first time in the trust’s 74-year history that the chairman has been elected for a five-year term, and it was confirmed during the 122nd meeting of the trust’s board of trustees in Gandhinagar.
“The board of trustees had proposed an amendment to the trust deed to make the tenure of the chairman five years instead of the existing one year. The matter was pending with the office of the charity commissioner of Junagadh for a long time. It had raised some queries in between which were addressed. Eventually, the charity commissioner approved the amendment recently. Hence, the tenure of the chairman will be five years instead of one year and in that light, the election of Narendrabhai (Modi) as the chairman for the next five years is a routine procedure,” P.K. Laheri, former chief secretary of Gujarat, who is a trustee of the STT, told the newspaper.