The Sree Padmanabha Swamy temple in Kerala is a “public temple”, the erstwhile Travancore royal family told the Supreme Court on Tuesday.
Arguing before a Bench of Justices U.U. Lalit and Indu Malhotra, senior advocate Krishnan Venugopal, for the erstwhile royals, submitted that the wealth of the Padmanabha Swamy temple belongs to the deity.
The ex-royal family was merely managing the wealth of the deity as ‘Padmanabha dasa’.
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The submissions were part of the final round of hearings in a batch of special leave petitions filed against a 2011 decision of the Kerala High Court.
‘No management rights’
The High Court had essentially held that upon the death of the last ruler of the erstwhile State of Travancore on July 20, 1991, the petitioner, His Highness Sri Marthanda Varma, did not step into the shoes of the ruler and cannot claim management rights over the temple under the provisions of the Travancore Cochin Hindu Religious Institutions Act, 1950.
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The high court had passed a series of directions in exercise of its jurisdiction as ‘parens patriae’ and concluded that the temple, its properties and assets would revert and vest in the State government under Article 295 and Article 296 of the Constitution. It held that to preserve the temple and its treasures, it was the duty of the State Government to make arrangements in the same way as in the case of State-run temples that were handed over to the State Devaswom Board.
During the hearing, the court made it clear that it would not presently go into the aspect of the opening of the secretive Kallara B and would instead focus on the main issues challenged in the special leave petitions.
Meanwhile, the court decided to continue on without an amicus curiae for the present. Senior advocate Gopal Subramanium, who had in the past presented several reports on the management of the temple and its treasures, has bowed out recently.