No application received for the post of trustees for 20,600 temples in Tamil Nadu, Madras High Court told
The Hindu
HR&CE department struggles to appoint trustees for temples in Tamil Nadu, faces disinterest despite multiple notifications.
The Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) department on Wednesday told the Madras High Court that though it had called for applications to appoint trustees to 31,163 temples in the State, not a single application was received with respect to 20,600 temples.
When Acting Chief Justice (ACJ) R. Mahadevan and Justice P.D. Audikesavalu wanted to know if there was a disinterest among people to become trustees of the temples with low income, Special Government Pleader (HR&CE) N.R.R. Arun Natarajan nodded in the affirmative.
Filing a status report in response to a public interest litigation petition filed by temple activist Rangarajan Narasimhan for appointing trustees to all temples in the State, the SGP said no one applied for 20,600 temples despite issuance of two notifications calling for applications.
The law officer added that the HR&CE department had decided to issue yet another notification calling for applications. Further, providing a break-up, the SGP said that out of the applications received for 10,563 temples, the trustees were duly selected and appointed in 6,814 temples.
The applications received with respect to the rest of 3,749 temples were under process, the SGP said. He added that there was no necessity to appoint trustees to the other temples in the State since 3,471 of them had hereditary trustees and 1,035 were covered by a scheme framed for their administration.
Mr. Natarajan also said the HR&CE department had successfully appointed trustees to 6,814 temples despite it having been a herculean task that often gets mired in litigation due to cases filed in the principal seat of the High Court in Chennai as well as in Madurai Bench against such appointments.
On the other hand, Mr. Narasimhan said the HR&CE department had appointed a single trustee in some temples though there should be at least three to five trustees for each temple. He said the department had conveniently not placed the figures with respect to the number of trustees appointed so far.
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