TRICHY: Imagine an ancient, intricately carved temple rajagopuram for a roof for your house! A family has been residing inside the rajagopuram of Thopparankatti Vinayagar temple in Thanjavur by converting it into a house for several decades before public protests forced the Hindu Religious & Charitable Endowment (HR&CE) department to evict them and set right a wrong they committed by permitting it.
Thopparankatti Pillaiyar temple was one of the several temples coming under the Thanjavur Big Temple administration. About 60 years ago, the administration rented out approximately 430square feet of the mandapam in the rajagopuram to a temple employee named Sabapathi Pillai through a tenancy agreement. Pillai’s son Jayaraman, 75, and his wife Shyamala, 70, were the last tenants residing in the ‘house’.
There is no trace of the temple at the place now and only Shyamala was living in what looked like a house every bit inside the rajagopuram.
However, legally the family could not have been called encroachers till January 2019 when they were handed out the eviction order by the HR & CE officials after local people raked up the matter.
“They remained tenants until the order of termination of tenancy was issued by HR&CE after which they were considered as encroachers,” said HR&CE department advocate V Chandrasekar.
Asked how temple premises could have been rented out to an individual, Chandrasekar said, “It happened nearly 60 years ago when the temple trustees took decisions without consulting the executive officers of the temple. Now the issue was taken up seriously and the solution was found by evicting them.”
Big Temple executive officer S Madhavan told TOI they had asked the family to vacate the place, but they stayed put.
“So we passed an order to terminate the tenancy on January 31, 2019. Yet, they remained there claiming that they had the rights to continue to reside there,” he said. Acting on the eviction order dated October 20 from the joint commissioner of HR&CE department, Thanjavur division, G Thennarasu, a team of officials led by assistant commissioner of S Krishnan carried out the anti-encroachment drive.
Thennarasu said the door frame (Nilai) put up at the entrance of the rajagopuram as the main door of the house was removed by the tenant Shyamala herself as she was evicted.
On the renovation of the structure, Chandrasekar said that the joint commissioner had written to the authorities concerned.. “It is also planned to install an idol in the rajagopuram after the inauguration,” he said.