The Madras High Court on Tuesday warned the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) Commissioner of stringent action if he fails to fix responsibility on officers who had permitted temple properties to be encroached.
Acting Chief Justice (ACJ) Munishwar Nath Bhandari and Justice D. Bharath Chakravarthy broached the subject during the hearing of a public interest litigation petition which complained of indiscriminate demolition of temples on government lands.
When a Special Government Pleader, representing the HR&CE Department, said that the encroachers on temple lands were being evicted now, the ACJ asked: “Why action is taken only against the encroachers? Why not against the officers?” Referring to one of the cases in which over 1,300 encroachments on temple lands had not been removed despite specific orders passed by the court in 2003, the ACJ asked: “What was your officer doing since 2003? Taking salary and minting money?”
Observing that the court had been coming across numerous cases of temple land encroachment and that vast extent of temple properties could not have been encroached without the connivance of the officials, the ACJ said: “Ask your Commissioner to be careful. We will not be liberal.”
