‘Courts cannot decide temple is private or public property’

A vacation bench comprising Justice RMT Teekaa Raman and Justice P D Audikesavalu, on upholding a single judge’s order in this regard said, “It’s a well settled legal position that the discretionary jurisdiction of this court under Article 226 of the Constitution is confined to the contours of judicial review of the decision-making process and is not an appeal against the decision itself.”

“As such, it would not be appropriate for this court to undertake the exercise of deciding the factual contentions raised by the appellants and the Statutory forum would be most suitable for that purpose,” the bench held.

As per the case, one M Jayaraman had made a representation on October 13, 2017 to Commissioner, HR&CE, to hold an enquiry regards the demolition of certain old structures in the temple under guise of putting up new construction. Thereafter, he moved the HC, seeking for a direction to dispose his petition pending with HR&CE. Following this, HC had directed the authorities to pass final orders within 8 weeks.

In pursuance thereof, Joint Commissioner, HR&CE, Salem after issuing notice to all the parties concerned passed an order on April 2, 2019 stating that the temple is a public one. But the association belonging to Vilaiyankula Gounders and Periathanakaarar of the temple challenged the aforesaid order. It was contended that the temple is a private one and as such cannot be governed by the provisions of Tamil Nadu HR&CE Act, 1959 which is applicable only to public temples and more particularly, when there has not been any declaration by a competent authority that it was a public temple anytime earlier.