The Supreme Court on Monday upheld eviction orders concerning 3.93 acres of land belonging to the Arulmigu Annamalainathar Temple in Kadayanallur, Tamil Nadu, where residential houses, a mosque and an Arabic school were built after the temple property changed hands through a disputed auction, as reported in Bar and Bench.
A Bench of Justices Aravind Kumar and Vipul Pancholi declined to interfere with a Madras High Court ruling in the long-running dispute, which dates back more than three decades.
The disputed 3.93-acre parcel forms part of the properties belonging to the Annamalainathar Temple. In 1994, the Tamil Nadu Temple Administration Board permitted the property to be sold through public auction, fixing the upset price at ₹3.10 lakh.
The auction was conducted on 19 June 1995, with five persons participating. R Subramanian, the nephew of then hereditary trustee V Subramaniya Iyer, emerged as the highest bidder with an offer of ₹10.17 lakh.
The Madras High Court subsequently found serious irregularities in the auction process.
The court noted that objections required under Section 34 of the Tamil Nadu Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Act, 1959, were invited only after the auction had been conducted. One of the objections also questioned whether the valuation fixed for the auction was substantially below the property’s market value.
The HR&CE Commissioner cancelled the auction proceedings in 1997. However, the Tamil Nadu government later issued a Government Order in 2002 directing that the sale be given effect to.
By then, portions of the disputed property had already changed hands.
In an earlier counter-affidavit before the High Court, hereditary trustee S Vaidyanathan stated that the auction purchaser sold the property to 13 persons in 2004. The purchasers subsequently divided the land into plots and sold them to more than 100 persons, many of whom went on to construct houses.
The affidavit also stated that a mosque and an Arabic school run by the local Muslim Jamat had been constructed on portions of the disputed temple land.
Court records further referred to the surrounding streets as being predominantly inhabited by members of the Muslim community.
The HR&CE Department subsequently initiated proceedings under Section 78 of the Act against those occupying the land.
A status report submitted before the High Court recorded 83 encroachers, with eviction orders eventually passed against all of them. Notices were initially served on 81 occupants, giving them the option of either becoming tenants of the temple or handing over vacant possession.
The High Court was later informed that 81 occupants had agreed to be treated as tenants. The HR&CE Department then began the process of fixing rent and regularising their occupation under Section 34A of the Act.
However, in its December 2025 judgment, a Division Bench of Justices Anita Sumanth and N Senthilkumar found that the original auction was vitiated by “gross non-compliance” with statutory requirements and possible collusion involving the then trustee.
The High Court held that the interests of the temple and the deity would prevail over private interests arising from an improperly conducted alienation of temple property.
With the Supreme Court now refusing to interfere with that judgment, the Madras High Court’s ruling and the consequential proceedings concerning the 3.93 acres remain undisturbed.
The case thus brings the decades-old dispute over the temple property back to the administration, with the eviction and tenancy proceedings continuing in accordance with the orders already passed.
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