HR&CE Dept. gives HC an update on ridding temples of encroachers

Says inspection committees have been formed in about 40,000 temples across the State

The Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) Department on Friday informed the Madras High Court that it had constituted inspection committees in 39,508 temples in the State, pursuant to court orders, for identifying temple properties and taking steps to retrieve them from encroachers.

Justice R. Mahadevan was told that the committees have so far identified all lands belonging to 9,014 temples.

Further, notices have been served on 28,617 occupants of lands belonging to 3,807 temples in the State and money to the tune of ₹1,450.95 lakh had been recovered from 6,902 occupants towards rental arrears and other dues.

In his report, the HR&CE Joint Commissioner (Legal), P.R. Ashok, said that the religious institutions under the control of the department own nearly 4.78 lakh acres of land, 22,600 buildings and 33,665 vacant sites in various parts of the State.

The properties were either used by the religious institutions or rented out to others.

Web portal

After a series of directions issued by the court in February this year, the department had also formed scrutiny committees in 39,508 temples to scrutinise the reports of the inspection committees. So far, property details belonging to 6,102 temples had been scrutinised and 14,021 encroachments identified, the official said.

In so far as collation and digitisation of land records of religious institutions was concerned, it had decided to develop a web portal named Integrated Temple Management System (ITMS) to cover all activities of administration of religious institutions.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister ‘Edappadi’ K. Palaniswami reviewed the action taken by the department and had instructed that the data available in the ‘Tamil Nilam’ database of the Revenue Department must be reconciled with the details of properties available in the records of religious institutions.

On the issue of fixation of fair rent for temple properties, the HR&CE Department said that the temples under its control owned 20,40,68,627. 96 square feet of land and buildings which had been leased out to 79,462 lessees. Of them, fair rent had been re-fixed with respect to 36,978 lessees with effect from July 1, 2016.

Individual temple managements had been instructed to expedite the process with respect to all other temples, the report stated.

Special Government Pleader S.P. Maharajan submitted the report along with a table containing updated details, as on July 31, 2018, of the work done by the officials for retrieving temple lands. After perusing the report, the judge expressed satisfaction over the work done by the department and gave it six more weeks to complete the task.