Bhopal: The state government has started collecting the property details of the temples of the state, on the pretext of lack of unified data of the religious properties. Could it be for simple reason that government wants to have a control over the temples and its assets?
The religious trust and endowment department with the help of the national informatics centre has developed a website to collect the detail information about the temples, its bank accounts and other movable and immovable properties.
While the government claims that the data is being complied as it want to display the details of the temples, however, one cannot rule out that keeping control over the temple administration and managing its assets could be the ulterior motive behind this whole exercise.
The administration claims that many a time reports of selling of temple properties comes to it but by the time the authorities initiate action the matter reaches the court. And so if the temple property details are available with the administration, timely action could be taken in case of any dispute.
The principal secretary of the department Manoj Shivastava informed that the government is having the details in the form of hard copy, but we wanted to make it online and bring it on public domain. The technical director of NIC, Sunil Jain informed that website will have the dynamic database of the temples, employees, integration with banking system, besides e-payment orders like honorarium, development works, grants and other activities will also be displayed on it.
It’s a online integrated database and detailed profile of all the temples of the state will be there. The website will have details of the main deity of the temple, its history, events and their timings. It will have geo-location, access map and other information.
The website will be containing the assets, property details, revenue including the management, ongoing works in the temple, bank accounts, funds and others. It will also have the photographs and the videos of the temples.
In order to have control over pujari management system, the government will have the complete details of the pujari including his joining date, photograph, bank account details, mobile and other information.
In the state 12,092 temples are administrated by the government, as per preliminary information there are 4396 temples which are having land less than 5 acres. And there are 2469 temples which have more than 5 acres of land.
The department also provides the honorarium to the pujari in accordance with temple assets, like more the property less the honorarium. The pujari of temple which has no land gets honorarium Rs 1000, if it possess land less than 5 acres the pujari gets Rs 700 per month, if temple has 5- 10 acre land, the pujari is paid Rs 520, while no honorarium is paid to pujari if temple has land property more than 10 acre. .
