Chennai
A division bench comprising Justice M Sathyanarayanan and Justice N Seshasayee before whom the plea moved by A Radhakrishnan, a resident of Salem in this regard came up on Monday, reserved orders after observing that such an exercise cannot be carried out without ascertaining the extent of temple lands under encroachment.
The plea related to a GO issued on August 30 to regularise and issue patta in favour of people who are in possession of objectionable public land. The petitioner had contended that he was not questioning the object of the GO or the policy decision of the State as regards public lands. But he was only opposed to the GO which states that temple lands would also be given to the encroacher, the petitioner said.
In fact, during the earlier hearings, the bench had observed that technically, the state is trying to help encroachers by making the encroachments legal.
As per the Tamil Nadu Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) Act, the Commissioner of the department is duty bound to protect the properties of the temples and are used to benefit the temples owning them. In such a scenario, how could the Government compel the commissioner to alienate such lands to encroachers, the bench wondered.
However, the State represented by Deputy Secretary, Revenue Department, in a counter had told the court that the GO is not a blanket order and the encroachments in the temple lands will be taken up temple-wise and patta offered based on the availability of the temple land and after getting concurrence of the HR&CE Department.
Further, noting that the yardstick applicable to residential encroachments will not be adopted for temple lands, the counter held that the Government had decided to grant patta for eligible poor families residing in temple lands for a considerable period of time and the land which are no longer required for the temple.
Also, to safeguard the interest of the temples and to derive income from such lands it has been decided to pay compensation as per the prevailing rules in force, the counter said.
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