Varanasi News: In Varanasi, Sanatan Rakshak Dal president Ajay Sharma has openly supported the removal of Sai's statue from temples by releasing an audio clip. Jagadguru Shankaracharya Avimukteshwaranand Saraswati has described the removal of Sai Baba's statue from the Sanatani temples of Kashi as a scriptural and commendable act. Along with this, he has expressed anger over the arrest of Sanatan Rakshak Dal state president Ajay Sharma.

At present, Sai's idol is being removed from the traditional Sanatani temples of Kashi. Welcoming this, Avimukteshwaranand Saraswati Maharaj said that due to the ignorance, negligence and laxity of the priests and managers, such idols were installed in the Sanatani temples due to greed, fear or other reasons. These idols are neither mentioned in the Sanatan religious scriptures nor is there any method of worshipping them. Nor do the Sanatan Dharmis get any kind of inspiration from them. 

Avimukteshwaranand Saraswati said that a good work was going on in Kashi. People had told us about it and we said that this is a good work and is commendable. Now we have come to know that this was a good work in accordance with Sanatan Dharma and it was the work of renovation of temples. It was the work of removing impurities and one of the people involved in that work, Pandit Ajay Sharma ji has been arrested by the police on the complaint of some people and many other sections have also been imposed on him. 

'Why does anyone object to the purification of temples?'
Avimukteshwaranand Saraswati said that we are unable to understand that if we are purifying our temples, refining them, then why would people object to it? The people who were doing this work have clearly said that if someone is a devotee of someone, then he should build a separate temple for him and worship him in it. Although the temple is of Sanatani deities. But still they are ready to say that we should build a separate temple and worship ourselves, when so much is being said. No one is being insulted. The idol is not being broken and thrown away. When it is being removed from there, it is being covered and removed respectfully so that no one's feelings are hurt. 

Shankaracharya Avimukteshwaranand Saraswati appealed to all Sanatanis to come in support of Ajay Sharma and said that we will fight his case firmly by staying within the ambit of law. When Shankaracharya Maharaj came to know during his tour of India that Sai's statue is being removed in Kashi and Pandit Ajay Sharma, who carried out this good deed, has been arrested by the police, he conveyed his message through audio recording.