CHENNAI: A communication from the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR & CE) Department headquarters, dated July 9, 2026, directing its joint commissioner in Tiruppur to remove specified survey numbers from the Prohibitory Module triggered a political row on Friday. BJP leaders alleged that the move was aimed at facilitating the transfer of a vast extent of temple land to encroachers, a charge strongly denied by Energy, Resources and Law Minister CTR Nirmal Kumar and senior HR & CE officials.
The communication pertains to 3,084.95 acres spread across 471 survey numbers in 15 villages linked to four temples in Karur district. The lands had earlier been brought under registration prohibition based on requests from temple authorities. Following representations from private pattadars claiming ownership, the Karur collector recommended that the restriction be lifted. The order only removes the registration bar and neither determines ownership nor confers title.
The controversy erupted after Temple Worshippers Society president TR Ramesh alleged on social media that the government had effectively handed over a vast extent of temple land to encroachers. The allegation was amplified by BJP leaders, including state president Nainar Nagenthran and senior leader Vanathi Srinivasan.
Nagenthran alleged that the HR & CE Department had removed the registration blockade on 3,085 acres of land, valued at around `25,000 crore, belonging to four major temples in Karur to enable encroachers to acquire the properties. He also questioned the speed with which the Karur district collector, the joint commissioner in Tiruppur and the HR & CE commissioner processed the order issued on July 9.
Responding to the allegations, Nirmal Kumar said the lands had been assigned under the Inam Abolition Act, 1963, to around 3,400 families who had been living there for over a century. The number of beneficiary families has since risen to nearly 10,000. He said claims that the lands belonged to temples surfaced only later and that the pattas had now been regularised.
“No temple land has been given to anyone,” the minister said, asserting that the TVK government would not evict around 10,000 families and that no rules had been violated. He also said Nagenthran should verify the facts instead of relying on social media posts before criticising the government.
A senior HR&CE official described the controversy as a “misinterpretation”. The official said no temple land had been transferred and that only survey numbers placed on the prohibited list by sub-registrars, based on communications from local temple executive officers, had been removed after the district administration found them to be pre-existing patta lands held in private names.
The official added that the lands had remained with the pattadars since the 1960s and had been “wrongly blocked”. The clarification had been communicated to the sub-registrars and related only to 471 survey numbers out of about 3,700 such cases.