The Madras High Court on Wednesday restrained Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) department from evicting Queensland Amusement Park at Pappanchatiram village in Kancheepuram district for want of conclusive evidence to prove that the property belonged to Kasi Viswanathar and Venugopaleeswarar temple.
Justice V.M. Velumani allowed writ petitions filed by owners of the amusement park and set aside the eviction proceedings initiated under Section 78 of the HR&CE Act. The judge held that the department could invoke the legal provision only if the property was owned by a religious institution and not otherwise.
In so far as 21.06 acres of land occupied by the amusement park, there was a dispute between the HR&CE and the Revenue departments over its title. The HR&CE department had claimed it to be a temple land on the basis of a Will executed by Venkaiah Zamindar in 1884 bequeathing 177.7 acres of land to the temple.
On the other hand, the Revenue department had claimed that the property was classified as Anadheenam lands after the Tamil Nadu Estates (Abolition and Conversion into Ryotwari) Act, 1948 came into force on January 1, 1951. Therefore, temple’s request for issuance of patta for the property was rejected in 1956.
Despite this dispute, the temple had entered into a lease agreement for agricultural purpose and handed over the property to the petitioner who had established the amusement park. Now, the dispute between the HR&CE department and the Revenue department over the ownership of the property was pending before the Commissioner of Land Administration.
Meanwhile, the petitioner had offered to provide an alternative land to the government and the Collector had inspected that land. The Collector had held that the lease granted by the temple to the petitioners was erroneous. Therefore, the HR&CE department had no authority to initiate eviction proceedings, the judge said.
