Madras HC stays circular issued by HR&CE Department seeking answers from temples on Agamic practices

Litigant T.R. Ramesh of Indic Collective Trust complained that the circular had been issued in defiance of a court order constituting a five-member committee, chaired by a retired judge, for the purpose

The Madras High Court on Thursday restrained Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) Department from carrying out an exercise to identify the Agamic and non Agamic temples in the State even before the constitution of a five-member committee as ordered by the court on August 22 this year.

Acting Chief Justice T. Raja and Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy stayed a circular issued by the HR&CE Department to all Regional Joint Commissioners on November 4 with instructions to circulate a questionnaire relating to Agamic practices followed by the temples within their jurisdiction and obtain their response.

The circular stated that the questionnaire appended to it contained 50 questions prepared by Sathyavel Murugan, member of the HR&CE’s high-level advisory committee. The Joint Commissioners were instructed to make the administrators of all important temples to fill in the questionnaire in full and submit the details at the earliest.

T.R. Ramesh, president of Indic Collective Trust and Temple Worshippers Society, had assailed such action on the part of the department. He recalled that a Bench of Chief Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari (since retired) and Justice N. Mala had on August this year ordered constitution of a five-member committee within one month.

The court had made it clear that the committee would be chaired by retired High Court judge M. Chockalingam and that the HR&CE Commissioner would be its ex-officio member. Further, it was ordered that Madras Sanskrit College executive committee head N. Gopalaswami would also be one of the members of the committee.

Apart from these three persons, the State government was given liberty to nominate two more members in consultation with the chairman. Though more than three months had elapsed since the court order, the government had not nominated the two members so far leading to delay in constitution of the committee, the petitioner complained.

The court had categorically stated that only the committee should identify the Agamic and non Agamic temples in order to make appointment of Archakas (priests) in those temples in accordance with the Agama sastras. In defiance of the court order, the HR&CE Department had begun to identify the Agamic temples on its own, he said and urged the court to quash the circular.