Tamil Nadu temple documents now at the click of a mouse

Ownership documents of lands belonging to temples under the control of Tamil Nadu Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR & CE) are now available for public viewing at the click of a mouse. The new DMK Government on Wednesday published the land records on the official website of the HR & CE department, weeks after promising to go transparent on the issue of assets belonging to temples under its control.

Scanned documents of lands owned by several temples across the state, including the famous Kapaleeshwarar Temple, and Parthasarathy Temple in Chennai, can now be accessed on the web. Land documents and details of 72 per cent of the total properties held by temples under government control have been digitized and uploaded on Wednesday.

Over 3.43 lakh acres of land documents of the total 4.78 lakh acres have been uploaded. “The job of uploading the documents of the remaining land pockets will be done quickly,” a senior official told DH, adding that the motive is to be transparent and to prevent any further tampering of the documents.

The process of digitising the land records and other documents related to temples that come under the department has been on for the past few years based on directions from the High Court and on orders from officials who were in charge earlier. The move comes amidst a debate in Tamil Nadu on whether temples should be freed from government control. Spiritual leader Jaggi Vasudev had in February this year launched a campaign #FreeTNTemples before the state went to polls. However, he welcomed the government’s move to go transparent on temple records in mid-May.

As many as 44,121 temples in Tamil Nadu come under the HR&CE department which manages and controls them. Since it took over on May 7, the DMK government has focussed a lot on the HR & CE Department as it feels being transparent on the lands belonging to temples will blunt the free temples campaign that is also supported by the BJP, which dubs the DMK as “anti-Hindu.” The department had also recently recovered land worth Rs 250 crore belonging to the Murugan Temple in Vadapalani in Chennai.