Enact a strict law to protect temple lands

Lokmat News Network

Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar:

Incidents of temple-owned lands worth crores being sold at throwaway prices are coming to light across the state. To protect the ownership of these temple lands, a memorandum demanding the creation of an ‘Anti-Land Grabbing Act’ was submitted at the District Collector’s office on Tuesday on behalf of the Maharashtra Mandir Mahasangh and 22 temple trustees.

According to the memorandum, various temples across the state were historically granted land as donations. Many of these temple lands (particularly Class-3 inam lands), although non-transferable, have been illegally grabbed. It alleges that land mafias, in collusion with revenue officials, manipulated records and illegally captured thousands of acres of temple land.

It further states that 671 land parcels under the jurisdiction of the Western Maharashtra Devasthan Management Committee have been directly encroached upon. Similarly, in Vidarbha particularly in Amravati and Akola districts temple lands were reportedly sold at undervalued rates, the memorandum claims.

States such as Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Assam have already implemented Anti-Land Grabbing laws to protect temple lands. On similar lines, the delegation has demanded that Maharashtra enact such a law as well.

Additionally, they have sought the formation of a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to conduct an in-depth inquiry into all temple land transactions and transfers that took place in the last 20–25 years.

Copies of the memorandum were submitted to deputy collector Rupesh Shingare, nayab tehsildar R.B. Bansode (Paithan), and nayab tehsildar Chaitsing Bahure (Soygaon). The delegation included Prakash Kulkarni, Pramod Naravde, Ravindra Pujari, and other temple trustees representing the Maharashtra Mandir Mahasangh.