All aadheenams directed to furnish property details to registrars

Petitioner Radhakrishnan from Chennai had stated that large number of people had donated land for Adheenams and temples. But, the land had been encroached upon. 

The Sengol Adheenam in Thoothukudi has several acres of land in Thoothukudi and Tirunelveli districts, but they are all encroached upon. Because of the encroachment there is no revenue for the Adheenams and so social works could not be undertaken recently. So, he had submitted a petition to the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) Department to recover the land, but no action was taken so far. He prayed the court to direct the collectors of Thoothukudi and Tirunelveli and also the HR&CE officials to measure the land belonging to Sengol Adheenam and remove encroachments. 

When the petition was heard on Thursday by Judges N Kirubakaran and R Tharani, counsel of the petitioner argued that in total 55,820 acres of land belonging to all the Adheenams in the state had been encroached upon and so the revenue from the encroached land had been affected. Because of the revenue loss some of the important prayers could not be conducted in the temples. 

After the arguments, the Judges directed all the Adheenams to submit the details of their properties to the Registration Department and directed the department to verify them. Then the HR&CE department was directed to submit the details of last auditing work undertaken regarding the properties of Adheenams and adjourned the hearing for February 20.