The Bihar government has initiated the legal proceeding to make deities owners of the temple land instead of priests, Law Minister Pramod Kumar said on Friday.
This is following the supreme court order that there is no mandate under the law that the name of pujari or manager is required to be mentioned in the revenue records since the deity as the juristic person is the owner of the land
The Law Department will soon issue a circular, removing the names of priests from the revenue records to protect the properties from unauthorised claims, Kumar told PTI on the decision that is likely to have widespread socio-political ramifications in the state.
”A priest cannot be treated as landowner (‘bhuswami’), and the revenue records will now have the name of the deities of the shrines. When the ownership changed to the deities, it would help in dealing with largescale irregularities in temple land as priests have been buying and selling those as owners,” he added.
Recently, the Bihar Religious Trust Board stayed the sale of land belonging to 299 temples in Bhagalpur division because of procedural discrepancies, he said.
The Board is also scrutinising revenue records of 5,533 acres of land belonging to different temples and mutts in the Darbhanga division, he said.
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