Lucknow: Retired Air Marshal Jeetendra Mishra, who assumed charge as chief executive officer of the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust on Monday, said the trust would continue to handle policymaking while he would be responsible for implementing its decisions on the ground.Speaking to TOI, Mishra said his immediate priority was to reorganise the existing temple management system by clearly defining responsibilities and authority across departments.“I am very clear about my responsibilities as well as the executive authority that I have. The trust is the policymaker and I am the one who executes the policy on the ground,” he said, adding that his role and powers had been broadly defined in writing.Mishra stressed that he was not taking charge of an institution that needed to be built from scratch. “A team already exists. The temple has been running for some time. It is not that we are starting a new temple,” he said.Describing the current arrangement as a “running system”, he said the focus was not on fixing any one loophole but on improving overall efficiency. “It is to make the whole system a bit more efficient. That is all,” he said.His first task, he said, would be to reorganise the existing setup, a process he expects to complete within one or two weeks.Once that exercise is completed, the management will assess whether additional manpower or specialised expertise is required. “There is a lot of talent that already exists. We just need to reorganise, lay out clear-cut responsibilities and authority, and then, if there are still some gaps left, fill them with experts,” he said.It remains unclear whether such experts will be selected from among the 15 candidates interviewed for the chief executive officer’s post or through a fresh recruitment process for functions such as security, finance and human resources management.On visiting prominent temples to study their management practices, Mishra said he was open to learning from institutions with longer experience but that such visits were not an immediate priority.“It is always good to learn from others. There are temples that have been running for much longer than this temple. They have learnt from their experience and I would love to learn from that,” he said.However, he said his immediate focus would remain on streamlining the existing system before studying models elsewhere.On finances, Mishra said the temple management had an adequate budget to run its operations.
