The Madras High Court on Wednesday allowed a writ appeal preferred by Sri Ram Samaj and set aside an order passed by an Assistant Commissioner of Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) Department on December 31, 2013 appointing a Thakkar (Fit Person) to manage the affairs of the registered society which functions from Ayodhya Aswamedha Maha Mandapam at West Mambalam in Chennai.
The First Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari and Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy held that the 2013 order was passed without strictly following the inquiry procedures enunciated under the HR&CE Act of 1959. Therefore, the Bench directed the Fit Person to move out of the Samaj forthwith and ordered that the department should hand over the administration to the incumbent office-bearers.
The Bench granted liberty to the department to conduct a fresh inquiry in accordance with the law to find out whether the activities of the Samaj would make it “a place of public worship by Hindu community” and whether there were any irregularities necessitating the appointment of an HR&CE official as the Fit Person to protect the properties owned by the Samaj and regulate its revenue, including public donations.
Such an inquiry must be conducted affording a proper opportunity of hearing to the Samaj, the judges said and directed the latter to maintain its accounts duly audited. They held that a single judge of the High Court ought not to have dismissed Samaj’s 2014 writ petition, challenging the 2013 order of the department, on March 17 this year, by citing the availability of alternative remedy. They said such a ground could not be cited after eight years.
Although the department had contended that the 2013 inquiry was initiated on the basis of a complaint lodged by M.V. Ramani, a former president of the Samaj, against its then office-bearers, the Bench pointed out that the same complainant lodged a similar complaint in 2004 and withdrew it in 2006. Then, the department had dropped all proceedings without completing the inquiry.
However, when he lodged another complaint in 2013, the department proceeded with it. The show-cause notices issued to the samaj did not contain any details about the complaint and the inquiry officer, in his proceedings appointing the Fit Person, had presumed that the Samaj had admitted that the Ayodhya Aswamedha Maha Mandapam was a place of public worship though the society had been stoutly denying the character of a temple, the Bench said.
The very fact that the Samaj had been running a matriculation school and a marriage hall proved that it was constituted for other purposes too apart from religious activities such as holding Sri Rama Navami Mahotsavam every year with traditional solemnity and fervour, it added.
