In Bihar, now only the deities will be the owners of temple land

Patna: The Bihar govt has begun the process to make deities owners of the temple land instead of priests, Law Minister Pramod Kumar said on Friday.

The Law Department will soon issue a circular, removing the names of priests from the revenue records to protect the properties from unauthorised claims, Kumar told the decision that is likely to have widespread sociopolitical ramifications in the state.

“A priest cannot be treated as landowner (‘bhuswami’), and the revenue records will now have the name of the deities of the shrines.”

It would help in dealing with large scale irregularities in temple land as priests have been buying and selling those as owners, he said. “The Bihar govt will simply implement the SC judgment passed on September 6, 2021.

The SC bench of Justices Hemant Gupta and AS Bopanna had ruled that ‘there is no mandate under the law’ that the name of pujari or manager is required to be mentioned in the revenue records since the deity as the juristic person is the owner of the land,” he said. -—PTI