On 10 December 2024, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India has raised concerns over the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) Department’s failure to provide records on temple assets for auditing purposes.
According to KP Anand, Principal Accountant General (Audit-II) for Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, a compliance audit aimed at reviewing the general oversight and control exercised by the HR&CE Commissioner over temples and their endowments could not proceed due to the department’s lack of cooperation and refusal to produce necessary records.
While discussing the CAG’s compliance audit report for the Government of Tamil Nadu for the fiscal year ending 31 March 2022, Anand, a Principal Accountant highlighted that the HR&CE Department manages significant assets, which the CAG sought to examine. He noted that similar audits had been successfully conducted in other states.
The CAG report stated that the audit team was unable to verify whether the actual revenue collected matched expectations or if there were revenue leakages due to under-collection or non-collection of lease rent from temple properties. The report also emphasized the importance of assessing potential revenue losses to the exchequer.
The proposed compliance audit on “Management of Assets by HR&CE Department” was scheduled to begin in May 2022, covering the period from 2019 to 2022. On 29 April 2022, the CAG notified the HR&CE Department of its intent and requested detailed information about the assets under its management. However, the department responded on 27 May 2022, arguing that religious institutions were beyond the jurisdiction of the audit and suggested limiting the review to funds disbursed from the state’s consolidated fund. Consequently, the audit team had to withdraw.
The department’s stance was disputed by the CAG, which clarified that the audit’s focus was on the implementation of the HR&CE Act and the records maintained by the department’s offices, which fall under the audit’s scope.
Efforts to address the department’s non-cooperation included escalating the matter to the Principal Secretary of the Tourism, Culture, and Religious Endowments Department in June 2022 and subsequently to the Chief Secretary of Tamil Nadu in both June and August 2022. By June 2023, the state government responded, asserting that the temples and the HR&CE Department did not fall under the purview of the CAG’s Duties, Powers, and Conditions of Service (DPC) Act, 1971, and that only government-released grants could be audited.
The CAG rejected this argument, citing that the government collects 4%-12% of temple income as lease rent, which is deposited into an administrative fund. Verifying the correctness of this revenue collection and its alignment with expenditures for HR&CE operations falls within the audit’s mandate under Sections 13, 16, and 23 of the DPC Act.
(With inputs from The Hindu)
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