CHENNAI: A division bench of the Madras High Court has stayed a portion of a recent order of the State government that proposed to assign land belonging to temples in the State, to poor people who are living on the land for years.
The court also asked the government whether action can be taken against the officials who allowed people to live on temple lands and the details of the action taken so far.
The bench of Justices M Sathyanarayanan and N Seshasayee granted the injunction while passing interim orders on a PIL petition from A Radhakrishnan of Salem, challenging the government order dated August 30 this year of the Revenue and Disaster Management department.
The bench posted the petition for further hearing on January 20, after directing the HR & CE Commissioner to file a detailed report on the number of temples, both listed and unlisted, that the department administers and the size of the lands owned by them with survey numbers. It also sought the details of the number of “encroachers”.