MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of Madras High Court on Tuesday ordered an interim injunction restraining the Kanniyakumari District Rural Development Agency (DRDA) and Thuckalay block development officer (BDO) from constructing a school building on a temple land in Kalkulam Talukin Kanniyakumari.
A Bench of justices R Subramanian and L Victoria Gowri passed the interim order following a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by TK Ramesh Kumar of Kanniyakumari claiming that the land belonged to Sunangaparai Sri Kandan Sastha temple, which is more than thousand years old.
The land was originally classified as 'government poramboke temple' and was later wrongly changed to 'government poramboke school', Kumar said. Though the assistant commissioner of Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR and CE) department wrote to the district revenue officer of Kanniyakumari last year to restore the original classification of the land, the Thuckalay BDO is taking steps to construct a school building on the land, he alleged and sought direction against the same.