Shri Mata Sheetla Devi Temple at Gurugram a ‘public Trust’: High Court

Saurabh Malik

Chandigarh, September 12

In a significant judgment, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has ruled that 400-year-old Shri Mata Sheetla Devi Temple at Gurugram is a “public Trust”. A Division Bench of the HC also upheld Haryana Shri Mata Sheetla Devi Shrine Act, 1991, after ruling that the legislation did not suffer from any constitutional defect.

The ruling by the Bench of Justice Sureshwar Thakur and Justice Kuldeep Tiwari is significant as the shrine was ‘acquired’ by the respondent (state) through the legislative enactment. The judgment came on a petition filed by Hukam Singh and other petitioners against the state of Haryana and other respondents for declaring the provisions of the Act ultra vires of Articles 14, 25, 26 and 254 of the Constitution.

Directions were also sought for declaring it against the provisions of the Religious Endowments’ Act, 1963. The petitioners had also prayed for directions to restrain the respondents from interfering in the shrine’s affairs and dispossessing its ‘alleged proprietors’.

The Bench, during the course of hearing, was told that the right of the petitioners as owners over the shrine could not be expropriated through the challenged enactment unless compensation was determined with regard to them. As such, it was averred by the petitioners’ counsel that the impugned legislation was arbitrary.

The crux of the arguments put forth before the court centered on a declaratory decree issued by a Civil Judge. The decree, acknowledging the rights of the plaintiffs to share the income generated from offerings at the shrine, was based on an agreement among the plaintiffs themselves, without any defendants being named in the civil suit.

The Bench asserted: “Article 26 of the Constitution preserves in a religious denomination the fundamental right to establish and maintain institutions for religious and charitable purposes; to manage its own affairs in matters of religion; to own and acquire movable and immovable property and to administer such property in accordance with law. However, invested fundamental right to a religious denomination is subject to public order, morality, and, health”.

The Bench added the impugned legislation was made with a laudable object to ensure purveying of better amenities and facilities to the pilgrims and, devotees visiting the Hindu shrine. The laudable object fell within the expostulations embodied in Article 26. The impugned legislation, as such, was not violative of Article 26.

“Moreover, when for all the reasons the petitioners are not the proprietors of the Hindu shrine, therefore, without determination of the compensation qua them in the impugned legislation also, the said legislation does not suffer from any constitutional defect,” the Bench ruled. Before parting with the judgment, the Bench asserted the shrine was a public Trust and the petitioners were not the proprietors.