State gets 8 months to upload property details of all temples

The Madras High Court directed the state government to upload the property details of every temple under the purview of the HR&CE Department within eight months following the government’s submission of digitalising the old property registers and preliminary reports of each temple and compare them with the new property registers to remedy the discrepancies.

Pointing out that uploading all the property details relating to temples would go a long way in public interest, a division bench comprising Justice MM Sundresh and Justice S Ananthi said, “Apart from protecting the immovable properties of temples, the general public will be able to know the nature of the property, which is in the hands of third parties.”

“This aspect will have to be given priority,” the bench said while granting eight months instead of the 10 months as sought by the state to complete the process.

The bench also recorded the government submission that an Identification and Scrutiny Committees have been constituted for 37,986 temples. The committees have identified the properties of 9,793 temples, which accounted for 1,66,633.30 acres of land. The details of 3,992 temples have been scrutinised and the Identification Committee have shortlisted 10,710 encroachments and 5,222 third person encroachments.

The government submission also said that necessary action was being taken under Section 78 of the Act to evict the encroachers. Of the Rs 297.63 crore rent arrears, dues to the tune of Rs 32.49 crore have been collected, it said, adding that appropriate steps were being taken to collect the balance amount and to initiate necessary legal action if they failed to comply.

The plea moved pro bono had sought, among other things, to stop giving temple properties to private parties by changing patta/title deeds.

The bench granted 8 months instead of the 10 months as sought by state to complete the process