If Sri Padmanabha swamy temple of Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala is the richest temple in the world, according to the recent revelation Puri Jagannath temple, Odisha is perhaps owns the largest landed properties in India.
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| .Puri Jagannath temple, Odisha booking.com/ |
In November 2919 itself the supreme Court of India came up with a an unexpected verdict that surprised the public across India,in particular, Hindu devotees of Odisha. The SC proved backed by concrete evidence that the most popular Jagannath temple in Puri Odisha owes whooping 60418 acres of land or 244 sq. meter of land within and outside Odisha. A few facts had emerged out of this landmark verdict 01. The temple owns lands 15 times larger than the size of Puri town, 02. Under the the temple are operating several mining and quarries, 03. The companies that ran the quarries and engaged in mining activities for a long time never paid the annual fees due to the temple authorities. 04. Consequently the the temple management incurred loss and the money could have been used by them to meet the expenses of the temple complex. 05. In June 2018 itself the state Governor expressed concern over the missing keys of the inner chamber of its Ratna Bhandar which were last opened way back in 1985. “The Governor wanted to get to the bottom of the case of missing keys,” a statement from the Raj Bhavan said..Ratna Bhandar is supposed to contain a huge quantity of gold and silver ornaments, etc. The district collector of Puri is the custodian of the keys and in 2021 he found that the keys were missing!! It contains 128 kg of gold ornaments and over 200 kg of silver utensils.
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| Puri temple, Odisha indiatimes.com |
The Supreme Court issued several directions while hearing complaints of mismanagement of finances at the Lord Jagannath temple in Puri.
The crux of the matter is it has been going on for a long tome unnoticed neither by the by the public nor by the ruling government. The department of temples under the state government is maintaining silence in this matter which is a serious one. It is an open open squandering of public money by the mining mafia in collusion with certain corrupt officials. What action is the state government officials contemplating to stop stop this illegal mining activities in the temple land ? As to the recorded landed properties this far proper documents are available only for 34201 acres of land.
The Supreme court chipped in at the right moment and sought information on the list of mining companies being in operation, their licence, annual income and other details in a particular specified time. The Lord Jagannath Temple in Puri besides owning 60,426 acre of land in Odisha also is in possession of about 150 kg of gold and many precious stones. he 12th-century temple at Puri dedicated to lord Vishnu also has 395.252 acre of landed properties in six other states - maximum of 322.930 acre of land is in West Bengal followed by 28.218 acre in Maharashtra, 25.110 acre in Madhya Pradesh, 17.020 acre in Andhra Pradesh, 1.700 acre in Chhattisgarh and 0,274 acre in Bihar.
