KALAVA, INDIA, January 31, 2005: Discounting Tamil Nadu government’s stand that the Sankara mutt premises at Kancheepuram was not a place of worship, the mutt on Sunday night asserted that it housed several icons, including that of the second Shankaracharya Sureshwara acharya, and pujas were being performed. Describing the government’s latest stand taken in the Madras high court as “contradictory” to Chief Minister Jayalalithaa’s January 12 reply to the Prime Minister on his apprehension about a possible break in the traditional pujas, mutt sources said here that the Chief Minister had stated that the pujas were being performed at the mutt even in the absence of the seers. In a counter in the high court on January 27 while seeking a stay on the National Human Rights Commission’s notice questioning the manner of the recent arrest of junior seer Vijayendra Saraswathi from the mutt premises, the government had said the mutt was “not a place for either private or public worship.”
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