Tamil Nadu forms panel, gives one-week deadline to probe disputed registration of Palani temple's land

Chennai:
Tamil Nadu's Commercial Taxes, Registration and Religious Endowments Department has formed a three-member inquiry committee and ordered it to submit its findings within a week, after a Palani Sub-Registrar registered 1.35 acres belonging to the Arulmigu Dhandayuthapani Swamigal Madam despite a statutory bar on doing so.

The panel — the Additional Inspector General of Registration (Stamps & Registration), the Assistant Inspector General of Registration (Vigilance) and the District Registrar (Administration) of Namakkal — must establish how the registration went through. 

Its brief requires inspecting all records at the Sub-Registrar's and District Registrar's offices, reviewing video footage of the registration process itself, identifying any officials responsible, and recommending safeguards against a repeat — all within a week, an unusually tight timeline for a government probe.

The land, in Palani's third ward, was conveyed by an individual with no title to the property but who claimed authority under a will. A Sub-Registrar in Palani first refused to register the deed on April 1, citing a pending civil dispute — a refusal the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court quashed nine days later, ruling that a civil suit alone cannot justify denying registration unless a court has separately restrained the registering authority.

Acting on that order, the executant resubmitted the document on July 3. It was held pending initially, then registered three days later, on July 6, by a different Sub-Registrar on incharge duty that day — even as a writ appeal against the original High Court order remained undecided, and despite a letter four days earlier from the Joint Commissioner of Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) flagging the land as temple property.

Officials say that is where the statutory breach occurred. Section 22-A(1)(ii) of the Registration Act, 1908 requires registering officers to refuse any instrument transferring property belonging to an institution governed by the Tamil Nadu Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Act, 1959, unless the transfer carries prior sanction from a competent authority. The Inspector General of Registration told the government that HR&CE had already confirmed the land's status before the deed was registered.
The GO was issued by J Kumaragurubaran, Secretary to Government, on Thursday.