The Madras High Court on Monday dismissed a writ petition which sought to prevent the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) Department from deputing its staff for administration of various temples in the State and order refund of the salaries, allowances and other perquisites paid to such employees, who had already been sent on foreign service/deputation, from the temple funds.
Chief Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari and Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy agreed with Advocate General R. Shunmugasundaram that there was no illegality in the HR&CE Commissioner having deputed the department staff to vacancies that had arisen in temples for which trustees had not been appointed for long number of years. Failure to make such deputation would have led to administrative chaos, they said.
Further, they recorded the submission of the A-G that the deputations were made only on temporary basis until the appointment of trustees who were the competent authorities to appoint temple staff. The A-G said that the process for appointment of trustees in all temples had begun last month but got delayed because of the urban local bodies polls.
He assured the court that the process would be kickstarted again after the completion of the poll process and that the trustees would be installed soon after they get identified by the district level committees.
