CHENNAI: The Madras High Court has held that the executive officers (EO) appointed under the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) Act cannot interfere with the religious activities of a temple but can only administer the properties belonging to it.
Referring to the question of an EO doubling up as the “Fit Person”, the court said that if both the functions are combined in a single person, the system of checks and balances would vanish and it would go against the statutory scheme, particularly Rule 4(a) of the HR&CE Rules. The EO can function as the “Fit Person” only for a certain period of time and the administration of the temple has to vest only with the Board of Trustees, said a bench of Justices GR Swaminathan and V Lakshminarayanan in a recently released order.
While an EO is a regular, salaried administrative employee of the HR&CE department appointed to look after the routine operations of a temple, a ‘Fit Person’ exercises the legal powers and duties of the Board of Trustees as an interim arrangement in temples that do not have such trustee boards.
“An area even slightly tinged with religious elements is a no-go zone for the executive officer. What is religious activity requires no delineation,” the court said. “Anything that has to do directly with worship falls within the realm of religion,” it went on to explain.
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“We make it clear that the EO of the temple cannot interfere with the religious activities, customary practices and traditions of the temple. That has to be necessarily carried out only by persons who are well versed with the customs and traditions of the temple concerned,” the court added. It also pointed to Section 45 which defines the role and functions of the EO.
The HC order was passed on a petition filed by temple activist TR Ramesh praying for barring the Secretary and Commissioner of HR&CE from appointing or continuing an EO or any other government officials as “Fit Person” of a temple or religious institutions that is under the administrative control of the department, including the Parthasarathy temple.
The petitioner, represented by advocate Niranjan Rajagopalan, had also raised the question whether the Parthasarathy temple can continue to be under the control of the EO who is doubling up as the “Fit Person”.
Additional Advocate General PV Balasubramaniam, representing the state, submitted that the EO was appointed to administer the temple as per a judicial order of 1982.
Referring to this, the bench noted that the 1982 order was an interim order which no longer survives since the main petition was disposed of in 1991 and the temple administration cannot continue to be run by the EO-cum-Fit Person by citing the aforesaid interim order. The additional AG promised the court to appoint the trustees within six months.