Data on 4.8L acres of TN temple land, encroachments goes online
Sivakumar B,TNN | Aug 22, 2015, 12.53 AM IST
CHENNAI: The government has created an online database of temples in Tamil Nadu and their properties — no little feat given that they own a total of 4.78 lakh acres, which both inspired the 'temple state' moniker and made them prime targets for land sharks.
The Hindu religious and charitable endowments (HR&CE) department, acting on a Madras high court order, coordinated with the revenue department to create the database with extensive details of all temples in the state, the land they own, their tenants and encroachments on the properties.
Officials said they would update the database, on the department's website at tnhrce.org/aerg.html, on a regular basis. Details of 4,488 temples, listed district-wise, are currently online.
The department earns a little more than Rs 200 crore annually from leasing out temple-owned properties. A handful of richly endowed shrines contribute most of this income.
Arulmigu Kapaleeswarar Temple in Chennai, based on the value of land and buildings it owns, is the richest shrine in the state. The temple has a large swathe of land along Greenways Road, a prime locality, parts of which the government has retrieved from encroachers.
"Kapaleeswarar temple has more than 900 grounds [around 22 acres] of premium property in the city," the official said. "We have retrieved a lot of encroached land from land sharks in recent years."
But some of the larger encroachers continue to retain land they have grabbed and have moved the courts in an attempt to hold on to them, he said.
Kamakshi Amman Temple in Tiruvarur and Ekambareswarar Temple in Mannargudi have the largest properties though the land is almost completely uncultivable. Piranmalai temple in Villupuram district has the most cultivable land.
In 2012, the Madras high court, on a petition filed by International Sri Vaishnava Dharma Sumraksahna Society president Swamy Govinda Ramanujadasa, directed the HR&CE department to collect details and create a database of properties owned by temples in the state.
Ramanujadasa informed the court that the thousands of temples in Tamil Nadu had properties in endowments worth thousands of crores of rupees. Though the state's temples control such valuable assets, many of they are unable to conduct even one puja a day, he said, adding that land grabbers had taken over a significant amount of temple properties. He said the revenue department was is in possession of land records and could pass on the details to the HR&CE department so it could reclaim the encroached properties.
The government appointed teams of officials including a district revenue officer to compile the database.
"We found that many temple properties had been taken over by people who conveniently had the names of the temples' deities," an HR&CE official said. "The department reclaimed most of these encroached properties."
