CHENNAI, june 29, 2013: After influential individuals and businessmen, the Tamil Nadu government is now looking at high-profile industrialists and educationists to manage temples across the state. 

TVS group Chief Venu Srinivasan, who took over as the chief trustee of the Srirangam Ranganatha Swamy temple on Thursday, is the latest. Srinivasan succeeded former Ashok Leyland managing director R Seshasayee as the chief trustee of the state's biggest temple. While Vijayakumar Reddy of Apollo Hospitals is the trustee of the Kapaleeswarar temple in Chennai, SRM college proprietor Pachamuthu is the trustee of the Azhagar temple in Madurai and educationist Karumuttu T Kannan is the chief trustee of the Madurai Meenakshi Amman temple. 

The job of the chief trustee is to monitor the daily routines of the temple and also safeguard the temple property. "Since many industrialists took over as trustees, we have seen properties being retrieved from encroachers and grabbers and other routines being changed for the benefit of the temple," said an official of the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments department. 

"Property worth 480 crore belonging to the Kapaleeswarar temple has been recovered in the past two years. We work in tandem with the HR&CE department and there is no friction between us," said Vijayakumar. 

"The appointment of industrialists as trustees has helped safeguard the huge temple wealth such as land, buildings and jewels," said a former trustee of the Kapaleeswarar temple. "The government picks industrialists who are devout and also have some financial muscle. Our basic job is to improve the functioning of the temples and also safeguard loads of its wealth," Karumuttu Kannan told TOI. 

"The income of the temple from sale of prasadam crossed 1.5 crore recently from less than 50 lakh before my appointment," Kannan said, adding that the temple had stopped outsourcing preparation of temple prasadam. "It is now being prepared on the temple premises," he said.

Source: The Times of India, June 29, 2013.