The BJP, struggling to get a foothold in Tamil Nadu, is in for major trouble as public resentment against a senior leader of the party for usurping 8.31 acres of prime land belonging to a 700-year-old temple has reached a crescendo.
M Subramanian, popularly known as "Oxford" Subramanian, a businessman, who is also the vice-president of Tamil Nadu BJP is in the eye of a storm following charges by members of the Viswakarma community that he has usurped the entire temple land worth hundreds of crores on the Tiruchirappalli-Dindigul highway for constructing an engineering college.
While the documents accessed by The Pioneer substantiate the charges by members of the Viswakarma community, the State BJP unit is finding itself in a helpless situation. T S Sankaranarayanan, a senior BJP leader in Tamil Nadu is on his way to New Delhi to inform the central leadership of the party about the "misdeeds" of Subramanian.
"The State leadership of the BJP is not willing to listen to our complaints as Subramanian is funding many leaders," Sankaranarayanan told The Pioneer.
Kalika Parameswari Temple, popularly known as Kamakshi Amman Temple,situated in the heart of Tiruchi city, belongs to the Viswakarma community as per the records of the Revenue Department of the Tamil Nadu Government. "Though we had leased the land to some tenants as early as 1967, the entire land was recovered from them following a court order in 2013. All official documents prove that the land belongs only to the temple and nobody has any rights over it," said Sundaram Rajendran, executive trustee, Kamakshi Amman Temple.
T R Ramesh, president, Temple Worshippers Society, who has prepared an inventory of all temple land in the State, said Kamakshi Amman Temple is the sole owner of the 8.31 acres of land. "As per Government orders and guidelines, no one other than the trustee could claim the ownership of the land. The entire land is to be used for the functioning of the temple rituals and the welfare of the community," said Ramesh, a former international banker turned temple activist.
"Though the BJP is not in power in Tamil Nadu, Subramanian is exploiting his contacts in the Government to manipulate rules and laws. He had deployed his henchmen to prevent the Government surveyor to measure and demark the temple land," said a visibly upset Rajendran.
Subramanian was unavailable to commenton the matter. A senior BJP office bearer said that Subramanian was avoiding the calls as he was aware of the move by this newspaper to bring out this scam. The only BJP leader to respond to queries about this act of Subramanian was Vanathi Srinivasan, the State general secretary. "We have not been told about this allegation by anybody in the party. There is an internal mechanism in the BJP to resolve this issue if the aggrieved party brings this incident to the notice of the leadership," said Srinivasan.
But the temple trustees and community members said that everyone, including the BJP State chief, were aware of the machinations by Subramanian. According to Sankaranarayanan, if the BJP leadership fails to intervene and ensure that the temple land was returned, the party, which faced a rout in the 2016 Assembly election, would face a severe drubbing in the ensuing local body polls as well as the 2019 lok Sabha election.
The revenue land commissioner of Tamil Nadu Government in an order dated September 1, 2016 has declared that the entire land belongs to the Tiruchirappalli Kamakshi Amman Temple and no outsiders can claim the ownership or tenancy over it.