Chennai: The Department of Religion and Hindu Amal (HR & CE) is carrying out a broad survey of Temple land using a differential global positioning system (DGPS) to track land parcels that are ‘lost’.
This department has involved 150 licensed surveyors, which are assigned by the Department of Survey and Land Records, to do work.
Verify notes in place 36,627 temples, walking to several lakh pages, has begun in many places.
Note is being digitized simultaneously.
The department of survey and land records have allocated 50 Rovers to carry out exercises.
Officials said there was a mismatch of around 50,000 hectares between land records available with the actual department and land in ownership between 1989-90 and 2019-20.
Many land records are lost, said an official.
This exercise is also intended to free the temple land of encroachment, he said.
Village administration officers will provide field maps and help the HR & CE team in carrying out field surveys.
The Rovers, which is equipped with a SIM card, will produce electronic data temple properties during the survey in place.
“Using DGPs, data will be transmitted to the data collection center set in large temples,” the official said.
The work is expected to end in a year, said HR & Minister CE P K Sekar Babu, inaugurated the training at the temple kabeleeswarar in Chennai.
To get started, the surveyors measured the tank temple of the kabeleeswarar.
Because the temple has land parcels that are sized from several cents to several thousand hectares, the department has formed several surveyor teams, each of which has 4 to 10 members.
They will be placed in major temples to carry out exercises.