MADURAI: The Madurai bench of the Madras High Court has impleaded eight senior officials, including IAS and IPS officers, in a contempt of court case over the alleged encroachment of land belonging to the Kalyana Pasupatheeswarar temple in Karur.
The petition was filed by Radhakrishnan, founder of the Thiruthondar Sabhai, who submitted that the century-old temple originally owned 3,054 acres, of which only 150 acres remained after the large portion of the temple land had allegedly been encroached upon by private individuals.
The land under encroachment has been said to be worth more than Rs 200 crore now. Commercial complexes and residential buildings have been constructed on the encroached land, he said.
The petitioner further added that he had approached the court in 2018, seeking the removal of encroachments and the court had subsequently directed the authorities to clear the encroachments within 12 weeks. However, the order remained unimplemented, prompting him to seek contempt proceedings against the joint commissioner of the Hindu religious and charitable endowments (HR&CE) department.
Hearing the petition on Wednesday, the division bench of justices Velmurugan and Ramakrishnan observed that no action had been taken to recover the temple land despite the court’s earlier direction.
The bench impleaded revenue secretary K.S. Palanisamy, home secretary A. Karthik, tourism, culture and HR&CE secretary V. Rajaraman, commissioner of revenue administration P. Chandramohan, commissioner of land administration, Rajesh Lakhoni, HR&CE commissioner T.G. Vinay, Karur Collector C. Muthukumar and central zone IG of police Balakrishnan as respondents in the contempt proceedings.
The bench also directed HR&CE commissioner Vinay to appear in person on October 5 and submit a status report explaining why the court’s directions had not been implemented and detailing the current status of the case.
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