By Justice Kumar

Copyright thehindu

The Madras High Court, on Thursday (October 9, 2025), directed Tamil Nadu government to constitute a heritage commission for protecting the age-old buildings and premises not covered under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act of 1958 and the Tamil Nadu Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act of 1966.

A special Division Bench of Justices R. Suresh Kumar and S. Sounthar, constituted for hearing temple-related cases, ordered that the Tamil Nadu Heritage Commission (TNHC) should be constituted within four weeks and a compliance report must be filed before the court. The interim order was passed on a writ petition filed by temple activist T.R. Ramesh.

The Bench said, though the State legislature had enacted the TNHC Act in 2012 itself, the law remained dormant for 12 long years and was brought into force only with effect from March 12, 2024 after the former Chief Justice Sanjay V. Gangapurwala and Justice J. Sathya Narayana Prasad (since dead) nudged the government to do so in a case filed by Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH).

Not constituted yet

Even after the law came into force, the government had so far not constituted the commission which should be chaired by an eminent person with concern and commitment for heritage conservation and consist of not more than 16 members including the Tourism secretary, Urban Development Secretary, Municipal Administration Secretary, Rural Development Secretary and Law Secretary who shall be ex-officio members.

Hence, the Bench ordered that the “State government must come forward to constitute such a commission at the earliest.” It directed “the Secretary to Government, Tourism, Culture and Religious Endowments department to take all necessary endeavour to constitute the Tamil Nadu Heritage Commission preferably within a period of four weeks from the date of receipt of a copy of this order.”

Tiruvannamalai temple works

Arguing as a party-in-person, Mr. Ramesh had highlighted the absence of TNHC to the court during the hearing of his case complaining about multiple construction works being carried out by the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) department both inside and outside the Arunachaleswarar Temple at Tiruvannamalai. The judges had inspected all those works on October 5.

Pursuant to their inspection, the judges directed the HR&CE departmernt to temporarily halt the construction works being undertaken for establishing a queue complex, an Annadhanam koodam (a shed for serving food), a prasadam stall and the proposed facelifting of Tirukalyanamandapam at Kalyanasundareswarar Sannidhi until the court could examine them further and pass necessary orders.

The department was also directed to halt the ongoing construction of a memorial for a temple elephant. After finding that the memorial was being built on a main road outside the temple premises, the judges wondered if it was really necessary to put up such a huge construction. They directed the HR&CE officials to submit records to prove that necessary approvals had been obtained for the memorial.

The Bench led by Justice Kumar, however, permitted the HR&CE department to go ahead with the ongoing works for providing facade lighting to the Rajagopuram (prime temple tower) and giving a facelift to the Kalaiarangam (auditorium).