Supreme Court says temple property cannot be taken over by government, even for public purposes

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

or charitable institution must be guided solely by the trust’s best interests and never by the government’s administrative convenience.

“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 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 administration of property belonging to a religious/charitable institution carries with it a duty of preservation, not a power of unfettered disposition,” it said.

“An acceptance of a gift of temple land by a Revenue functionary, however laudable the public purpose it is intended to serve, offends the object of the Act,” said the bench, adding that temple property is held for the deity and not for “gratuitous disposal by whoever happens to hold the office of trustee, however well-intentioned”.

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.

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. 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.

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The present judgment arose from a dispute over 1 acre and 10 cents of land belonging to Nagapalayam Mariamman-Ponnachiamman Temple in Kodumudi village in Tamil Nadu’s Erode district. In August 2017, a temporary trustee executed a gift deed transferring the land to the state government, represented by the district collector and tehsildar, for the construction of a taluk office.