CHENNAI: Grappling with a large number of litigations over several issues, including encroachment, gold melting, recovery of arrears and appointment of trustees, the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) department on Friday informed the Madras High Court (HC) that an ‘audit manual’ is being prepared to verify temple properties.
The counsel for the department, T Chandrasekaran, made the submission to a special bench of justices R Mahadevan and PD Audikesavalu when a batch of petitions regarding temples came up for hearing. “The department has been preparing the audit manual,” the counsel said, responding to observations made by the bench on putting in place a robust system.
Appearing before the court through videoconferencing, J Kumaragurubaran, commissioner of HR&CE, said currently the audit of temple properties are being held by officials of the finance department and an officer in the rank of deputy secretary of the department has been deputed for heading the team. The bench granted three weeks to the commissioner to place details of the mechanism for audit before the court.
Referring to the recovery of rental arrears owed to the department, the commissioner informed that steps have been taken to collect `2,390 crore at the rate of `540 crore per year and currently a target of `2 crore to `3 crore per day is set for recovery.
Currently, rentals are accrued through 99,000 properties and efforts are on to lease out three lakh properties, he stated. Advocate General R Shanmugasundaram informed the bench that district committees have been constituted in all the districts and trustees would soon be appointed. The bench wanted him to submit a schedule for the appointment of trustees as per the provisions.