BHUBANESWAR: The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has pulled up the State government for utter mismanagement of temples and poor upkeep of important records like property register and keeping jewels under unauthorised custody.
Expressing concern over mismanagement of properties such as landed, housing and precious metals, the latest audit report on general and social sector for the year ending March 2020, said that over 4,500 acre of landed properties of six temples are under encroachment.
After conducting audit of the records of 13 temples in the State, the CAG report said that of the total 12,767.679 acre of land of these temples, only 5,749.464 acre (45.03 per cent) were under their possession while 35.28 per cent of the land was under encroachment.
The highest 4,030.78 acre of land belonging to Debottar Dhenkanal is under encroachment.
Similarly, 296.664 acre of Jagannath Ballav Math at Puri, 139.330 acres of Thakur Mahal at Nilagiri in Balasore, 36.370 acre of Lingaraj temple, 0.070 acre of Maa Mangala temple at Kakatpur and 0.657 acre of Maa Samaleswari temple are under encroachment.
While four religious institutions were in possession of all their landed properties, administrations of Maa Mangala temple and Sarala temple (Jagatsinghpur) are not aware of the extent of possession of the landed property, the CAG said.
“The extent of encroachment of landed property was also not known in respect of three religious institutions. Therefore, 7,018.215 acre of land were not under possession of the respective seven temples. Thus, the temples concerned are not aware of the status of more than half of their properties which are not under their possession,” the audit report said.
Although Lingaraj temple owns landed properties of 1523.879 acre across the State, only 31.556 acre are under actual possession.
The temple management is only aware of possession and encroachment of land related to Bhubaneswar. It has no information the status of the land at other places.
The Executive Officer of Lingaraj temple informed the auditors that 36.370 acre out of 69.423 acre of land in Bhubaneswar were under encroachment.
On joint physical inspection of jewels (gold and silver) in 11 out of 13 religious institutions, audit found shortage of 823.334 grams of gold and 53,595.84 grams of silver - valued at Rs 60.07 lakh - in case of five shrines and a major discrepancy of 579.69 grams of gold and 52.182 kg of silver was noticed in Cuttack Chandi temple.
“The unauthorised custody of jewels valuing Rs 4.73 crore raises doubt on safety of the same,” it added.
Missing Jewels