SOBHANADI LAKSHMINARASIMHA SWAMY VARLA VEDA PATHASALA Vs. COMMISSIONER ENDOWMENTS DEPARTMENT HYDERABAD

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This Writ Petition is filed by a Vedapatasala at Agiripally Village, Krishna District, challenging the correctness of the orders passed by the Commissioner of Endowments, Hyderabad on 18.01.2011 directing in turn, the Executive Officer, Sri Venkateswara Swamy Vari Devasthanam, Dwaraka Tirumala to take over the Patasala with immediate effect. It is stated that the petitioner Vedapatasala has been endowed with a total extent of Ac. 103.1 1/2 cents situate in various villages in Krishna and adjoining Guntur Districts. From out of the income so realized from these lands, the Vedapatasala is required to be run. It is further stated that the institution was established more than 100 years back by Sri Suri Markandeya Sastry and also got the endowments of the temple registered on 28.05.1913. The lands, which have been endowed to the Vedapatasala, are all highly fertile agricultural lands and taking advantage of the absence of the representative of the Vedapatasala in the village concerned, the local ryots, who have been cultivating the agricultural lands, have failed to pay up the annual maktha, as a result of which, the institution has been nearly strangulated for want of adequate funds to run it.

(2.) A Vedapatasala is essentially a residential institution where the teachers and the taught live together to re-establish "the gurukula traditions". All the students, who seek to learn the Vedic literature, are treated as the children of the teachers. The teaching programme begins much before the daybreak only to end long after the dusk time. All the students are provided food, appropriate clothing and shelter. They are also taught the ways and means of leading a pious life to enable them secure easy grasp of the knowledge about the ultimate. In short, a new way of life, which is ideally suited to the learning sought after by them, is what is being imparted in a Vedapatasala. It is rather unfortunate that lately the rich legacy of Vedic literature is not receiving adequate attention, recognition and respect in the society at large. Notwithstanding the obligation of the cultivating tenants to pay up the necessary remuneration/maktha to the Vedapatasala, periodical defaults are committed with increased regularity, thus crippling the institution itself. If the institution does not receive the yield, both in cash and kind, it will be difficult for it to survive. In those set of circumstances, a committee, comprising of eminent personalities, has been constituted somewhere in 2007 to suggest appropriate measures for effectively running the institution and they have proposed to hand over the Vedapatasala to Kanchipuram Math, so that the Vedapatasala would be administered properly and efficiently and the students and the teachers are protected from the uncertainties, which they are required to face otherwise. However, the Commissioner of Endowments has viewed the matter in a different perspective and passed the impugned order directing Sri Venkateswara Swamy Vari Devasthanam at Dwaraka Tirumala in West Godavari District to take over the Vedapatasala. The only question which Sri V.V. Prabhakara Rao, learned counsel for the writ petitioner would urge is that there is no power in the hands of the Commissioner of Charitable & Hindu Religious Institutions and Endowments to take over a Vedapatasala and then, appropriate the assets and the liabilities of the said institution.

(3.) Per contra, Sri V.T.M. Prasad, learned Standing Counsel for the 2nd respondent temple and the learned Government Pleader for Endowments appearing for Respondents 1 and 3 would contend that the Commissioner of Endowments is the appropriate authority to supervise and administer all Hindu religious and charitable institutions and in that capacity, he can take over an institution and then, get it administered through another institution.