A public interest litigation petition has been filed in the Madras High Court for the constitution of a special investigation team (SIT) to bring to book all past and present government officials responsible for misuse, illegal use and misappropriation of funds of Hindu religious institutions and also unlawful alienation of temple properties.
When the matter was listed before Chief Justice S.V. Gangapurwala and Justice P.D. Audikesavalu on Thursday, Special Government Pleader N.R.R. Arun Natarajan said the litigant had not made the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) Department a party to the case, though all allegations were levelled against it. Hence, the judges granted a week’s time to petitioner B. Jagannath to implead the HR&CE Department as one of the respondents and permitted State government pleader P. Muthukumar to take notice on behalf of the Home Secretary and the Director-General of Police who alone had been listed as the official respondents.
The Chief Justice also said the petitioner could make a representation to the High Court Registry for listing the case before a Special Division Bench, led by Justice R. Mahadevan, constituted to hear cases related to temple properties and a decision would be taken on such a representation in the administrative side.
In his affidavit, the petitioner, an advocate, said the income and funds of the Hindu temples and endowments must be utilised for purposes for which those institutions had been established. The HR&CE Act, 1959, permits the use of surplus funds of the temples for certain other Dharmic purposes only, subject to certain conditions.
The law requires the proposal for utilisation of surplus funds to emanate from the temple trustees. However, trustees were not appointed to a large number of temples in Tamil Nadu for nearly 12 years and the HR&CE Department had been managing them by appointing its officers as Fit Persons, the petitioner complained.
With such appointments misused, large amounts of temple funds had been diverted for construction of marriage halls, renovation of ancient paintings, computerisation of the HR&CE Department and other purposes. The Palani Dhandayuthapaniswamy Temple funds, amounting to ₹23.45 crore, had been diverted between 2011 and 2018, he claimed.
The petitioner also alleged that the Tiruppur Vishveshwaraswamy temple funds dwindled from ₹110.93 crore in 2018 to ₹51.47 crore in 2019 and then to ₹30.09 crore as on date. He also said the HR&CE Department had constructed the office of its Regional Joint Director on a piece of land belonging to the Meenakshi Sundareswarar temple in Madurai.
Listing many other instances with respect to other temples, the petitioner insisted on a direction to the State government to constitute an SIT under the aegis of the Police Department to prosecute all the individuals concerned and retrieve the temple properties and funds that had been alienated illegally.
