Hyderabad: The state endowments department has decided to take new pattadar passbooks from the revenue department for temple lands on the name of presiding deities in the wake of a recent Supreme Court judgement that the presiding deity of a temple is the owner of the land, while priests are required to perform rituals and maintain properties of the deity.
Endowments minister A. Indrakaran Reddy on Saturday reviewed the status of temple lands across the state with senior officials of the department.
Temples own 87,235 acres in Telangana of which 23 per cent has been encroached upon as per the 2018-19 report of Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) tabled in Legislative Assembly in March this year.
Speaking to this newspaper, the minister said, "A large chunk of temple lands continues to be in the names of priests in the state. As per the recent Supreme Court judgment, the state government has decided to transfer the ownership to presiding deities of temples. We have sought new pattadar passbooks in the name of deities from the revenue department."
The CAG report stated that the absence of a proper mechanism to protect temple lands had increased the risk of further encroachments.
Although 20,124 acres of land had encroached, the assistant commissioners of the department filed cases with the endowment tribunal to an extent of only acres 3,488 acres. Out of the 87,235 acres of endowment land, passbooks were not obtained by the commissioners for 59,898 acres.
The minister said a few officials were showing negligence on temple land lease agreements and on recovering lease arrears. He warned such officials of severe consequences and directed them to conduct a special drive to recover lease arrears.
He said the earnings of temples had come down drastically due to Covid-19 since March 2020, and instructed officials to avoid wasteful expenditure. He asked them to deposit gold ornaments donated by devotees in gold deposit schemes to earn additional income.
