Madras High Court had restrained the Tamil Nadu government from melting gold jewellery of Temples after hearing PILs filed challenging the gold monetization scheme which proposed to melt unused temple jewellery into gold bars. The scheme under question was passed in the Tamil Nadu legislative assembly. The court halted the process of melting gold donated by devotees to Hindus temples in the state till trustees are appointed to the relevant temples.
According to reports, Advocate Niranjan Rajagopalan had mentioned that there were three Writ petitions which argued that the administration of every Hindu religious institution should be done by trustees.
M Saravanan and A V Gopala Krishnan were the petitioners who had challenged the decision of melting temple gold. Advocate-general R Shunmugasundaram then informed the court that advertisements had been issued for the appointment of temple trustees. It was also told that the appointment process would take four to six weeks to be completed.
Shunmugasundaram said, “The work of carrying out the inventory of the offerings at the temples and the properties of the temples may continue, but the decision of whether or not to melt the jewellery which has been offered in the temples would be taken after the trustees are installed in the relevant temples.”
T.R. Ramesh, president of Indic Collective Trust and Temple Worshippers Society had earlier objected to the appointment of Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) department employees as Fit Persons in temples through deputation. He had claimed that the appointment of HR&CE department employees violated the provisions of the Tamil Nadu HR&CE Act of 1959 and the Fundamental Rules of the Government of Tamil Nadu. He also said that that payment of salaries to such officials on deputation from temple funds was illegal and amounted to misuse of the funds.
However, HR&CE department told the Madras High Court that advertisements for the appointment of district-level committee members were issued who would then appoint trustees for all temples. The department said that the appointment of Fit Persons was an interim arrangement.
Earlier, advocate general R Shunmugasundaram had informed the court that the scheme for melting gold jewellery donated to temples for monetisation is not new and it had been in existence since 1977. He had informed that so far, about 5 lakh grams of gold jewellery have been melted and deposited in various nationalised banks which is fetching around Rs 11 crore as interest.
