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Thiruvananthapuram: BJP National Executive Committee member Kummanam Rajasekharan on Saturday said K. Jayakumar’s appointment should mark the beginning of a major reform to free the temple administration from political control.
Former Kerala Chief Secretary Jayakumar is among the few bureaucrats who have been consistently trusted by state governments and given key positions even after his retirement in 2012.
Veteran BJP leader and former Mizoram Governor Rajasekharan said the government’s decision to appoint a respected bureaucrat to the post is a long-awaited acceptance of the devotees’ demand to free the management of temples from politicization.
However, he said a change of leadership alone would not solve the problem.
“The permanent solution lies in freeing temples like Sabarimala from government control,” he said.
Rajasekaran alleged large-scale corruption, misappropriation and encroachment on temple lands and called for strict action against those responsible.
“The Devaswom Board has over the years become a political satellite of the ruling front. It should be restored as an autonomous body upholding the principles of Hinduism,” he said.
He criticized the state government for using temples as platforms for political gains.
Rajasekaran said, “People who believe neither in temples nor in God have been appointed to key positions in the board. This has made temples an instrument of propaganda, thereby diluting their sanctity.”
He said that the basic principle that the temple property belongs to the deity has been forgotten.
He said, “Instead, it is now treated as a commercial asset handled with greed and material interest. The recent theft of the Sabarimala gold has deeply hurt the faith of the devotees. The authorities who looked at the gold only in terms of its weight and value failed to see what the devotees saw – the presence of the divine.”
Rajasekaran blamed the existing Devaswom laws for the decline in temple administration.
The BJP demands amendments to the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Act to ensure that temple management is handed over to boards representing devotees and guided by faith-based principles, he said.
Expressing similar views, Union Minister of State for Fisheries George Kurien said that communists are fundamentally atheists, and Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s move to appoint Jayakumar was “just a fluke after being caught on the backfoot over the massive theft of the gold plates of the Sabarimala temple.”
–IANS