Gangtok: Many senior and responsible officers in the district administration here are very unhappy with the manner in which Commissioner VK Sharma, Regional Director, Reserve Bank of India, had conducted the inventory of the properties of Rumtek Dharma Chakra Centre (DCC). The inventorisation process, which was dragging on with little progress till the afternoon of 13 July, was suddenly over by early evening, and the Commissioner left town the next day.

What is irking officials, who wanted a final and definitive solution to the lingering problem, is that the Commissioner did not break open the seals of any of the almirah in the main treasure room, despite the fact that none of them were the seal of the Karmapa. "He brought so many of his people from Kolkata, kept them in Gangtok in style, and in the end nothing came out!" said a senior official.

The three parties involved, the state government, the plaintiff (Karmapa Charitable Trust) and defendant No.3, Goshir Gyaltsab Rinpoche, had chipped in equal amounts of money to share the Rs. two lakh expense account that the Commissioner had been given. The court had directed the Commissioner that only visual verifications of certain items, which includes the Vajra Mukut (the famous Black Hat, which is the virtual symbol of the Karmapa) if the box had been sealed by the previous Karmapa.

Sources confirmed that none of the seals on any box or cupboard was that of the Karmapa. The original seals of the Karmapa, which the 16th Karmapa had instructed his juniors to put while he was being treated in the US for cancer (of which he died in 1981), had been broken open in 1992, in the presence of Goshir Gyaltsab Rinpoche as well as Shamar Rinpoche, now the two contending parties in the case for inventorisation of DCC properties.

"Why did he need to panic?" asked a very senior monk. "No one out there in the main treasure room would have objected had he broken the lock, because that was all within the orders of the court. Since the seals were not that of the Karmapa, there would be no question of people’s religious sentiments being hurt either," he said.

It is learnt that the Commissioner will seek the advice of the court once again to break the seals. But this is precisely what has surprised most senior officials. Till then, the warring factions are waiting with bated breath for one of the most important thing that can settle the entire Karmapa issue: the prediction letter.