The Supreme Court has ruled that temple property is held for the deity and cannot be usurped by the government, “whatever its label or ostensible public purpose”, underscoring that every decision concerning the properties of a religious
The court made it clear that the State’s power to regulate temple administration does not make it the owner of temple assets, and that the duty to protect such properties cannot be used to justify their transfer to the government, even for a public purpose.
“The State, as custodian, cannot unilaterally usurp, nor permit any of its officers to usurp, the property of the religious/charitable institutions it is charged to protect,” a bench of justices PS Narasimha and Alok Aradhe said in a judgment delivered on October 16. “The administration of property belonging to a religious/charitable institution carries with it a duty of preservation, not a power of unfettered disposition,” it said.
Dispute centres on land transferred for construction of taluk office
The ruling in a dispute over temple land in Tamil Nadu comes amid a broader legal debate over state control of Hindu religious institutions. The Supreme Court is also seized of a batch of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of laws governing temple administration and religious endowments in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Puducherry. Similar statutory frameworks regulate the administration of Hindu temples and religious endowments in several states, including Karnataka and Kerala. The pending challenge raises broader questions about the extent of government supervision over religious institutions and the balance between statutory regulation and their rights over their affairs and assets. The batch of cases are expected to come up next week.
The petitions, the first of which was filed by the late Swami Dayanand Saraswati in 2012, were revived for hearing by a bench led by justice BV Nagarathna in May this year. The transaction was challenged by devotees and a hereditary trustee, who argued that the land was endowed for the deity and could not be transferred without following the safeguards under the Tamil Nadu Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Act, 1959. The Madras high court dismissed the hereditary trustee’s petition in March 2019, holding, among other things, that the statutory provision governing alienation of temple property did not expressly mention gifts. Setting aside the high court ruling, the Supreme Court held that the land was an inam property granted for the support and maintenance of the deity and was governed by Section 41 of the 1959 Act.
Because the land was intended for a public office, the court rejected the argument that the transfer could be justified.
It said the State, acting through the commissioner and other officials under the law, was “a custodian and regulator of temple properties, not their owner”.
