Gods’ namesakes squatting on temple lands across Tamil Nadu

CHENNAI: The state government, which embarked upon an ambitious scheme to digitize all land records of temples under the control of the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) department across Tamil Nadu, has found that at least 25,868 acres of land worth around Rs 10,000 crore belonging to various temples is under encroachment.
The digitization of land records of more than 38,000 temples and mutts, which began a few years ago, has been completed and officials — including two district revenue officers named special officers for Madurai and Coimbatore — have been appointed to reconcile the land details with revenue records under the updating registry scheme (URS).
During the verification process, officials found out that in several places, temple properties have been ‘wrongly’ registered in the names of individuals who, surprisingly, bore the names of the temples or their presiding deities.
For instance, a piece of land belonging to the Kapaleeswarar temple in Mylapore in Chennai, was grabbed by an individual named Kapali. A person, who called himself Parthsarathy, encroached a plot of land owned by the Parthasarathy temple, and there are also a few Mariammals, who have grabbed land of Mariamman temples elsewhere in the state. “A total of 674.40 acres of land belonging to 156 temples has been recovered, and at least recovered. Several properties were registered in the names of individuals, who had taken on the names of the temples or their presiding deities,” said the official. “Now, we are in the process of reclaiming all this land. A total 6,847.26 acres of land belonging to 1,466 temples is still to reclaimed,” said an official. Currently, 66% of the work has been completed. The remaining work pertains to cases pending in the courts,” said the official.
All this came to light during an assessment that was carried out in the wake of digitisation of the land records and after re-confirming with temples that owned the encroached parcels of land. The HR&CE has filed cases in various courts to reclaim ownership.
“During the updating registry scheme (URS), the ‘pattas’ (property deeds) of the HR&CE temples were wrongly transferred to private individuals. To rectify this and get back the pattas, two district revenue officers have been appointed as special officers in Madurai and Coimbatore,” said a senior HR&CE official, seeking anonymity. Apart from this, the government has also reclaimed 7,387.20 acres of land belonging to 1,195 temples that were under dispute for long. “There is still 19,022 acres of land belonging to 3,898 temples that are yet to be retrieved,” says an official.
While entering data into computers, many ‘errors’ were made. “A total of 674.40 acres of land belonging to 156 temples were recovered. Several properties were registered in the names of individuals, who had taken on the names of the temples or their presiding deities,” said the official. “Now, we are in the process of reclaiming all this land. A total of 6,847.26 acres belonging to 1,466 temples will have to be reclaimed,” said the official. Most of the lands donated by erstwhile rulers to the temples have been Many of these properties have been encroached upon, and the department has also lost several acres of land due to lack of proper documents. A total of Rs 3,209.42 crore worth of agriculture land, plots and buildings have been recovered from various people, including companies, shops, individuals, politicians and others in the last few years.
At least 3,906 cases involving land and other temple assets are pending with regional joint commissionerate courts.