CHENNAI: The CAG has accused the state government of refusing to cooperate for an audit of assets belonging to temples managed by the HR&CE department.
In its compliance audit report that was tabled in the Tamil Nadu Assembly on Tuesday, the CAG said that a special audit was proposed to be conducted in May 2022 for the 2019-2022 period since there were frequent media reports about the loss of temple properties.
However, the HR&CE department objected to the audit stating that there was no jurisdiction for scrutiny of records pertaining to religious institutions, the report mentioned. The issue was taken up with the principal secretary of the department and later with the chief secretary twice in 2022. However, the state government replied in June 2023 that the temples, religious institutions or HR&CE department did not come under the purview of the Duties, Powers and Conditions of Services Act of the CAG.
The reply also said that the HR&CE did not own any assets and the CAG could only audit grants released by the government. The CAG argued that the reply was not tenable since the state government is entitled to collect 4-12% of income from the assets of temples as lease rent and remit it to its administrative fund.
“In order to ensure the correctness of realisation of the lease rent to the government, an audit needed to ascertain the total income from the assets of the religious institution and expenditure on pay and allowances of HR&CE department by virtue of sections 13, 16 and 23 of the DPC Act,” the report said. It also pointed out that the Madras High Court in its orders had opined that proper accounts relating to income from the lands of religious institutions were not maintained.
Citing the policy note of the department for the year 2022-23, the report said there are 4.78 lakh acres of land and 22,600 buildings belonging to temples in Tamil Nadu and the temples collected a total rent of `117.63 crore between July 1, 2022 and March 21, 2023.
“Due to the non-cooperation and non-production of records, Audit could not discharge its duty of giving assurances on the actual revenue being collected or whether there is a leakage in revenue realisation causing loss to the exchequer due to non/short collection of lease rent from the assets of the temples,” the CAG report noted.