Chennai: The Madras high court has dismissed a public interest litigation, challenging the circular issued by the commissioner of Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowment department, directing its officials to perform yagnas in all important temples under the control of HR & CE for good seasonal rain and prosperity of the state.
Dismissing the PIL filed by V.Anbazhagan, a division bench comprising Justices C. V. Karthikeyan and Krishnan Ramasamy said this court cannot interfere with any religious beliefs or hopes. Whether the puja or the other things performed are successful or not, this court cannot destroy such belief or hopes of the religions, the bench added.
In his PIL, Anbazhagan submitted that the circular dated April 26, 2019 issued by the Commissioner of HR & CE was creating a situation whereby the rituals prescribed by the HR & CE to be done at a large scale will spread irrational thinking, hinder rational and progressive thinking of a common man. It was the duty of the state government to direct the citizens enforce schemes to save the rainwater, grow the trees, increase green cover, prohibit and remove encroachments in the water ways, water bodies. The state government without doing the same was promoting the yagnas for rain causing financial loss to the general public and religious institutions, he added.
He said at present Tamil Nadu has 2,359 temple tanks and they were monitored and maintained by the HR & CE. Of these tanks most of them were in bad condition. Further some temple tanks were used to dump the sewage and garbage. The HR & CE may utilize the public money for renovation of temple tanks to save the rain water in monsoon period. Restoring natural water tanks can go a long way in improving the groundwater level and quality, he added.
