Chennai, Feb 3 (PTI) The Madras High Court on Thursday slammed the Tamil Nadu Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) top officials and the executive officers of the temples for conniving with the encroachers to usurp temple properties.

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They are not supposed to sit simply in air conditioned rooms and watch the properties of the temples being looted by the encroachers. They deserve serious actions like salary cut and other penal action, the first bench of Acting Chief Justice M N Bhandari and Justice P D Audikesavalu orally observed.

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The bench was passing further interim orders on a PIL petition which alleged large scale encroachment of the property belonging to Tirisoolanathar temple in the city.

The water bodies, government and temple lands are easy targets for land sharks and officials were acting hand in glove with the encroachers, if not mute spectators. The salaries of these officials should be frozen, they added.

"They are not drawing salary for encroachments. Take action for removing encroachments or will not allow the Commissioner to draw salary," the ACJ said adding the Commissioner should monitor the activities of subordinate officers and prod them to take action promptly against encroachment of temple land.

He also questioned why the Commissioner, who is under obligation for taking action, had not suspended such officials who failed to stop encroachments or retrieve encroached land. They should be made accountable for their ‘misdeeds' and corruption, he added.

The bench directed the HR&CE Commissioner to furnish the details of all the temples in the State where encroachments exist on the temple lands and the action taken therein so as to avoid multiplicity of litigations, as number of cases are coming up time and again before this Court to seek a direction for removal of encroachments on the temple lands.

This is otherwise required to be monitored by the Executive Officers of the temples under the supervision of the Commissioner, HR & CE Department, the bench added and posted the matter for further hearing on February 14.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)