Protest brewing over doing away with 'free' police guard of honour for worship centres by Kerala govt

Thiruvananthapuram: A recent decision of the CPM government in Kerala to do away with the practice of police guard of honour to processions of worship centres has triggered a row.

Apart from the BJP and various Hindu outfits, the Congress also demanded the government to revoke the decision that will affect many famed temples including the Sree Padmanabhaswami temple in Thiruvananthapuram.

The state home department has issued the directive in this regard recently, which stated that in case worship centres require guard honour the authorities concerned will have to pay for that.

While Hindu outfits already staged demonstrations over the matter, a state level meeting of office bearers of temples to be held on Tuesday will discuss this matter also among other issues.

Meanwhile, a senior official of the state devaswom minister's office told DH that already the norms prescribed that the worship centres should be paying for service of the police for any function. The only thing is that now a formal directive in this regard was issued.

However, officials associated with temples as well as Hindu outfits' leaders deny this. Hindu Aukya Vedi leader R V Babu said that even in the recent temple festivals, police gave the guard of honour without any payments.

Many of the temples that get the police guard of honour for festivals are partially governed by the state devaswom boards. The practice of giving a police guard for major festival events is also something being followed from the time of the princely rule, they said.