The 79-year-old was born in the Nagina tehsil of Uttar Pradesh’s Bijnor district. After completing his post-graduate studies in Physics, Rai taught at a college in Bijnor for nearly 11 years before formally joining the RSS, with which he had been involved since his childhood, and becoming a pracharak. After a year, he was made gat nayak (shakha organiser) and then sah-zila karyavah (district joint secretary) and was among those detained during the Emergency.

After that, between 1981 and 1984, Rai served as the Sangh’s zila pracharak in Dehradun before moving on to adjoining Saharanpur and later Meerut. Rai became the prant co-organisation secretary of Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) in July 1986 and later served as the organisation secretary in one of its regional units.

At the height of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement in 1991, Rai was moved to Ayodhya. From 1991 to 1995, he was the VHP’s co-organisation secretary for UP. He was shifted to Delhi in 1996 as the outfit’s central co-secretary. He also served as secretary, joint general secretary, and general secretary of the VHP, before being promoted as its international vice-president in 2018.

Rai came to the spotlight when he was appointed the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra’s general secretary, becoming its key face. He supervised the temple construction from Karsevakpuram in Ayodhya, which served as his base.

Even as he came under Opposition fire — with AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal alleging that Rai refused to share accounts of the donations with the Prime Minister and the SIT that had been set up was only an eye-wash constituted to protect “big-people” — VHP’s key functionaries in Ayodhya and Lucknow defended Rai, saying there might have been a “lapse in supervision” by Rai because “he trusted people around him”.

Anil Mishra

The 65-year-old Mishra was one of the 15 trustees of the Shri Ram Janmbhoomi Teerth Kshetra, which was formed in 2020.

Ahead of the consecration ceremony of the Ram Temple on January 22, 2024, Mishra and his wife, Usha, performed the rituals as “Pradhan Yajman (main hosts)”. Mishra began the rituals for the consecration of the Ram Lalla idol on January 16 by taking a dip in the Saryu river, amid the chanting of mantras. After that, he began a fast and performed the prashchita, sankalpa, and karmakuti pujas, which lasted for eight hours.

Mishra lives in Ayodhya and, since being named a trustee, has frequently interacted with the media, locals, and VIP visitors about the progress of the temple’s construction work.

Mishra hails from the village of Patauna in UP’s Ambedkar Nagar district. He joined the RSS during the Emergency and rose through the ranks, becoming a prant sah-karyavah and later the prant karyavah of the RSS in the Awadh region. He was also associated with the Ram temple movement and is currently a member of the RSS’s Awadh regional unit.

Mishra served as a government medical officer (homoeopathy), retiring in 2020. After retirement, he got involved in RSS activities in Ayodhya and the temple construction work. Mishra’s two sons are both doctors, one of whom practises medicine in Germany.