Chennai, September 9( BPNS)

The Tamil Nadu Hindu Religious and Charitable  Endowments (HR&CE) department is to carry out extensive surveys using different global positioning systems(DGPS) to trace lost land of temples in the state.

The HR&CE department has already engaged 150 licensed surveyors to complete the work.

It may be noted that the land records details of 2019-20 and 1988-90 have found that a starling mismatch of around 50,000 acres of temple land in Tamil Nadu. Officials of the HR&CE department told IANS that the records of several lands are missing.

He however said that the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu ,M.K.Stalin has directly asked the minister of HR&CE, P.K.Sekar Babu to act immediately after reports on the 50,000 missing land records had come out.

Village administrative officers would provide field maps and support the HR&CE teams to carry out the survey. The HR&CE department has engaged a team of surveyors with team comprising 4 to 10 surveyors and would be stationed at the major temples.

With thousands of acres of temple, land being ‘lost’ and encroachers having a field day, the Tamil Nadu state has commenced operations without limit

Tamil Nadu HR&CE minister, P.K.Sekar Babu while speaking to IANS said,” Tamil Nadu government will not allow the temple land to be encroached upon and the difference of 50,000 acres in the land records of 1988-90 and 2019-20 is big and we have already engaged professional surveyors to conduct a proper survey.:

The department is expecting the work to be completed in a year and onsite verification of several records running to lakhs of pages have started in many temples of the state.