The Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) department on Monday informed the Madras High Court that the Chennai-based, 132-year-old company Amrutanjan Ltd was in occupation of 14 grounds of the Mylapore Kapaleeswarar Temple land on Luz Church Road till 2018. The company has to pay arrears of ₹9.74 crore towards rent.
Appearing before the first Division Bench of Chief Justice Sushrut Arvind Dharmadhikari and Justice G Arul Murugan, Special Government Pleader (HR&CE) NRR. Arun Natarajan said that the temple authorities had initiated action under the Revenue Recovery Act of 1890 to recover the rental arrears. He also said that there was no direct landlord-tenant relationship between the temple and Amrutanjan.
The SGP said the temple had given 14 grounds and 910 square feet of its land on a 99-year lease to one PR Sundera Iyer on August 28, 1901. Then, the lease was given for a monthly rent of ₹1,400. Iyer, in turn, had assigned the lease rights to a woman named Ramayee Ammal, from whom Amrutanjan Ltd had obtained the rights and continued to occupy the lands on payment of ₹1,400 a month for decades together.
He said, Amrutanjan continued to be in occupation even after the expiry of the 99-year lease period on August 27, 2000. Though notices were issued in 2001 and 2004, the company did not vacate the property. Hence, in 2005, a committee constituted for fixing fair rent for temple properties fixed the monthly rent for the land in the heart of Chennai city at ₹3.3 lakh per month and demanded the rent from 2001.
Immediately, the company filed a writ petition in 2005 to declare Section 34A(5) of the Tamil Nadu HR&CE Act of 1959 as illegal, ultra vires, and unenforceable, since it requires any person filing a statutory appeal before the HR&CE Commissioner to deposit the claimed rental amount in the temple’s bank account. The writ petition was dismissed by a single judge of the High Court in 2025, and hence the present writ appeal, Natarajan said.
He also brought it to the notice of the Division Bench that the company continued to be in possession of the property till 2018. Therefore, the single judge had directed the HR&CE department as well as the temple administration to recover the rental arrears. After hearing him as well as the counsel for Amrutanjan, the Chief Justice said there was nothing on record to prove that the company had indeed filed the statutory appeal.
He said, Amrutanjan had failed to produce an acknowledgement to prove that the statutory appeal was filed before the HR&CE Commissioner or to prove that the officer had insisted on depositing the demanded rent as a precondition to entertain the appeal. Wondering what necessitated the company to challenge the validity of a legal provision, the Chief Justice’s Bench said it would pass detailed orders on the writ appeal in a day or two.
Published on March 16, 2026