Chennai: A war of words broke out in the assembly on Friday between HR&CE minister S Ramesh and former minister P K Sekarbabu over the handling of temple administration. While Ramesh accused the previous DMK govt of leaving projects worth ₹418 crores pending, Sekarbabu hit back, stating that succeeding govts should complete, not cancel, projects announced by their predecessors.Presenting the demands on Friday, Ramesh said that, of the 844 announcements made by the previous govt, several had no financial allocation. He alleged that they were made merely to increase the number of announcements in assembly.Sekarbabu retorted that pending projects announced by the previous govt should be completed by the succeeding govt rather than cancelled, to which Ramesh said the govt had cancelled only “unnecessary projects”, citing the proposed multi-level parking project in Coonoor as an example. Sekarbabu also demanded the minister present evidence rather than making empty accusations.Defending the govt’s approach to temple administration, Ramesh claimed that social reformer Periyar, while serving on the Erode temple devasthanam committee, had helped clear its debts and left ₹45,000 in the balance. “We have Periyar as our ideological head, hence temple administration will be good in our govt,” he said.Ramesh said the HR&CE department has initiated steps to retrieve 40,245 acres of temple land that remain in private hands. He said that during the computerisation of chitta records, around 33,949 acres of temple land had been wrongly converted into pattas in the names of private individuals.“Over the past 100 days, the govt has gone on appeal to retrieve temple properties measuring up to 464 acres. Regarding computerisation of chitta records, the govt is on appeal to retrieve 349 acres of land,” he said. The department has so far retrieved 45 acres in the past three months. The minister said the govt had recovered ₹108 crore in rental and lease dues in the past 100 days, while another ₹2,000 crore remained to be collected.He announced temple restoration projects worth more than ₹200 crore, including 64 temples that are 1,000 years old and 75 partially dilapidated temples. He also announced ₹1 crore each for constructing a Vasantha Mandapam at Saidapet Karaneeswarar temple and renovating Thiruvottiyur Thiagarajasamy temple. The department will also improve connectivity to Thiruchendur Subramanya Swamy temple and Thirunelveli Karayaar Sorimuthu Ayyanar temple by procuring buses.A virtual reality facility would be introduced to help devotees learn about the history of temples, while the department has begun reassessing the value of temple gold, which has not been reassessed for several years, Ramesh said.
