Minister for Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) P. K. Sekarbabu on Wednesday urged the public to hand over any documents pertaining to temple lands to the department.
Speaking at an event to mark the fencing of one lakh acres of land belonging to temples by the department at Sri Bhavani Amman temple at Periyapalayam in Tiruvallur district, he said that around 3.75 lakh acres of land had clear documents that matched with those in other departments.
The temples under the purview of the department owned over 5.25 lakh acres of land and efforts were on to trace the remaining documents or inscriptions pertaining to gifts or donations of lands by the devout.
“In many cases, the lands had been converted as poromboke land which were being retrieved and titles changed back to temples. In others, the names of the deities in whose names the lands are registered, have been changed to those of local residents. We are tracing all these documents. In one case in Dindigul, we found 100 acres of land and got the land back,” he said.
He praised the team of youths involved in marking the lands with differential global positioning system and planting cement concrete poles with the letters “HR&CE” on them. He presented certificates of appreciation to 20 team leaders. The project to mark the lands was launched in November 2021 from the Kapaleeswarar temple in Mylapore.
HR&CE Commissioner J. Kumaragurubaran, Joint Commissioner (Vellore) C. Lakshmanan and Assistant Commissioner (Tiruvallur) K. Chithradevi were present.
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