{"id":10792,"date":"2012-01-27T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-01-27T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2012\/01\/27\/tamil-nadu-government-takes-over-agastiyar-temple-in-chennai\/"},"modified":"2012-01-27T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-01-27T12:00:00","slug":"tamil-nadu-government-takes-over-agastiyar-temple-in-chennai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2012\/01\/27\/tamil-nadu-government-takes-over-agastiyar-temple-in-chennai\/","title":{"rendered":"Tamil Nadu Government Takes over Agastiyar Temple in Chennai"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.deccanchronicle.com\/channels\/cities\/chennai\/audit-errors-drive-tn-take-over-temple-265\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n<p>CHENNAI, INDIA, January 27, 2012 (Deccan Chronicle): The Agastiyar temple at T. Nagar (central Chennai) that has been managed more as an ashram and a defunct Naadi Jothida Nilayam for about six decades was taken over by the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowment (HR &#038; CE) department on Wednesday evening citing &#8220;gross mismanagement&#8221; and &#8220;violations.&#8221; The temple had its origin as an ashram dating back to 1940 and was registered as a society in April 1943 by 12 persons for running a Naadi Jothida Nilayam. Over time, it became a full-fledged temple and now contains several sannadhis, according to sources in the HR &#038; CE department.<\/p>\n<p>In October 1947, the then commissioner of HR &#038; CE Board brought the temple under the board&#8217;s control as per the HR &#038; CE Act 1926. But the decision was challenged in the high court, which set aside the commissioner&#8217;s order. The court had then observed that the &#8220;board&#8217;s premature interference has really arrested the slow and gradual evolution of shrine into a public temple.&#8221; Subsequently, the &#8216;ashram&#8217;s&#8217; appeal was quashed.<\/p>\n<p>In June last year. The department&#8217;s assistant commissioner held an enquiry at the temple following a spate of complaints from public alleging misappropriation. The official found that the place no longer served as an ashram and that a full-fledged temple functioned. It was also found that Kumbhabhishekam was performed to the temple on three occasions with generous contributions from philanthropists and devotees.<\/p>\n<p>Though the &#8216;ashram&#8217; management raised funds on various occasion, the accounts were never audited, a senior official said and added that investigations would be made on the amount collected from the public. &#8220;The temple has six priests and there was no opposition to the department&#8217;s decision to exercise administrative control of the temple from any quarters,&#8221; the senior official said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source CHENNAI, INDIA, January 27, 2012 (Deccan Chronicle): The Agastiyar temple at T. Nagar (central Chennai) that has been managed,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10792\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}