How rich is the Lord [only depends on its Administrators !!!]

To those of us who have great faith in Lord and frequent Temples regularly………… first read the News that has appeared in Times of India – Chennai Edition of date – 13^th March 2013.

How rich is the Lord? Boards at temples will tell devotees

Govt-Controlled Shrines Told To Display Property Details

B Sivakumar TNN

Chennai: Next time you visit a temple in Tamil Nadu, besides a darshan, you can also learn how rich the presiding deity is. A circular issued by the state government’s Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) department has directed all the 38,000 temples under its control to display details of properties held by them, the occupants of properties and the names of rent defaulters.

    “We have instructed temple authorities to put up big boards with all the property information along with puja timings, available sevas, names of donors and their contributions. This is to help tourists visiting a temple for the first time to get all the information about it,” HR&CE commissioner P Dhanapal told TOI.

    On April 23 last year, the Madras high court directed the government to collect details about the properties owned by various temples under its control and create a database. This follows a petition filed by Swamy Govinda Ramanujadasa, president of the Chennai-based International Sri Vaishnava Dharma Sumraksahna Society. Ramanujadasa informed the court that temples in Tamil Nadu own about 4.78 lakh acres of land worth thousands of crores of rupees. Though temples are endowed with such valuable assets, most are unable to conduct even one puja daily because they don’t get much revenue out of these properties, he said. The revenue department, which is in possession of the land records, must pass on the details to the HR&CE department so that for necessary action can be taken to get back lands under illegal occupation.

    The HR&CE began collecting information about the properties owned by each temple and in the process, it also instructed authorities to display the property details along with the daily puja routine on the premises, said Dhanapal. Right now, temples under the Salem division of the HR&CE have begun putting up boards with all the information. Others are likely to follow suit soon.

    The department, which was recently attached to the tourism department, has also instructed major temples to put up signboards in public places like bus stands, police stations, railway stations and other prominent places giving directions and details like distance from important locations.

    Recently, some boards that contained directions to the Meenakshi Amman temple in English, Hindi and Tamil in Madurai were vandalised and the authorities were made to remove them.      “Such incidents are rare and boards are being installed with information about the temple in prominent towns,” said Dhanapal.

So there will be Boards that will explain the temple’s history and also the extent of property under its control

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/How-rich-is-the-Lord-Board-will-tell/articleshow/18942363.cms

After reading the news, one cannot but ask….  

The website of ‘The Hindu Religious & Charitable Endowments Department’ states that : The management and control of the temples and the administration of their endowments is one of the primary responsibilities of the State . A number of measures have been undertaken prior to the year 1925 for efficient control and supervision of the administratin of the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments.HRCE.  In the Act 1 of 1925, the Government constituted "the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Board"

Now there are highly paid Officers and Staff – administering the temple…… but unfortunately, they still do not know the property owned by the temples, leave alone the correct way of administration – the simple step of collecting proper revenue.  Recently, in some temples the list of defaulters were displayed….. the rents are measly absolutely not in tune with the present day property rates…… No body on earth would rent out property for such small measly amounts and yet lakhs of rupees remain unpaid or rather uncollected.  It is common knowledge that even those Temples for which vast landed property had been donated in the past by various donors do not get proper revenue……… are all these the basic responsibility – the very purpose of existence of administrators in such temple…… and when such arrears exist, why no action is being taken against those Officers who are failing in their basic duty.

Only Gold alone can save the Temples !!

With regret – Allikkeni Mainthan.