NEW DELHI: Supreme Court on Friday granted Tamil Nadu government more time to complete the process of appointing trustees in temples in the state. Taking note of the TN government’s affidavit according to which the department is taking sincere efforts to complete the process for appointment of trustees in all the religious institutions as early as possible and the process would be completed by 2024, a bench led by Justices AS Bopanna posted the plea for August, 2023.
For the state, senior advocate Jaideep Gupta said, “It is a long process. In some cases committees have to be made. There is a statutory process and committees are to be constituted.” “Trustees have to be appointed for more than 37,145 temples. We have issued notifications inviting applications for the appointment of trustees for 18,806 temples so far. Even if only 10 applications are received for each temple, 1,88,060 applications have to be verified and scrutinized by the above-said 322 employees of the department. Further, notifications ought to be issued to the remaining 18,339 temples by the above employees. All the employees are working towards expediting the process,” the state had said in its affidavit.
Earlier, SC had directed TN to bring on record information related to temples where process of appointment of trustees in temples was complete, was underway and where some extra time will be needed. The state government informed the SC that the appointment process has commenced for 1045 temples in a phased manner all over the state and the appointments will be completed in six months time.
“Grounds raised that ruling political parties are being appointed as trustees are denied. The applications received for appointment of trustees are duly scrutinized and antecedents are verified through the inspector. The persons who are suffering disqualification prescribed under Section 26 of the Act are not considered,” the affidavit stated.
While terming the grounds raised in the plea as “baseless” the state had also called as erroneous the conclusion that all temples have lakhs of acres of land, thousands of buildings and crores in gold and diamond ornaments.