Madras High Court also upholds a Government Order removing a hereditary trustee from a Devasthanam after he was found guilty of several charges.
| Photo Credit: The Hindu
The Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) Department has succeeded in not letting an Executive Officer (EO), accused of misappropriating ₹1.37 crore of temple funds, to retire from service voluntarily without facing the Departmental inquiry.
Allowing a 2022 writ appeal filed by the HR&CE Commissioner, a Division Bench of Justices D. Krishnakumar and K. Kumaresh Babu reversed an Order passed by a single judge of the High Court in 2021 permitting the EO R. Muthusamy to retire from service.
The Bench agreed with Special Government Pleader (HR&CE) N.R.R. Arun Natarajan that the single judge had erred in allowing the writ petition filed by the EO and letting him retire from service voluntarily despite his request having been rejected by the Commissioner.
HR & CE Department to focus on infrastructure improvement through master plans in T.N. temples
Authoring the verdict, Justice Babu said, the Order rejecting the voluntary retirement request had been passed within the statutory period of three months since the requisition was submitted but the single judge had calculated the period wrongly to hold that the request should be deemed to have been accepted.
Hereditary trustee
In yet another case related to the HR&CE Department, Justice N. Anand Venkatesh upheld a Government Order issued on February 1, 2024 removing G. Prem Anand from the post of hereditary trustee of Sri Vengeeswarar, Azhagar Perumal and Nagathamman Koil Devasthanam at Vadapalani in Chennai.
The judge said, the writ petitioner had failed to give satisfactory explanation to the charge of having skipped four immovable properties of the Devasthanam while carrying out the decennial exercise of preparing a new property register and also not explained why he did not handover the old register to the Department.
Justice Venkatesh agreed with Mr. Natarajan that the petitioner had also violated the HR&CE Act, as well as the statutory rules framed thereunder, by leasing out 10 shops, belonging to the Devasthanam, to private individuals without the approval of the competent authority in the HR&CE Department.
The judge said he was not inclined to interfere with the G.O. because the petitioner had also been found guilty of a serious charge of having collected donations from the devotees, by citing the renovation works to be carried out in the temple, without obtaining express sanction from the authorities concerned.
