New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday said it would temporarily suspend provisions of the Uttar Pradesh government’s 2025 Ordinance that effectively took over the management of the revered Shri Banke Bihari Temple in Mathura-Vrindavan.
A Bench comprising Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi added that the Apex Court will transfer the batch of petitions – challenging the Uttar Pradesh government’s Shri Bankey Bihari Ji Temple Trust Ordinance, 2025 – to the Allahabad High Court.
Until the validity of the Ordinance is adjudicated, a committee headed by a retired High Court judge will supervise the temple’s affairs, stated the Justice Kant-led Bench.
It hinted that the proposed management committee will include the District Collector, other state government officials, and representatives of the Haridasi Sampraday.
The Apex Court said that it would upload a detailed order by Saturday on multiple petitions challenging the Uttar Pradesh government’s move to take over control of the temple’s administration, which has traditionally been governed under a private management structure based on a 1939 scheme.
Further, the Supreme Court said that it will recall its May 15 judgment, which allowed the state government to utilise temple funds for the corridor development project.
In an earlier hearing, the Justice Kant-led Bench took exception to the “clandestine manner” in which the Uttar Pradesh government sought approval to use temple funds by filing an application in a pending civil dispute.
It had emphasised that temple rituals must continue in accordance with the traditions of the Haridasi denomination, and questioned the “tearing hurry” with which the Uttar Pradesh government promulgated the Shri Bankey Bihari Ji Temple Trust Ordinance, 2025.
One of the pleas contended that the recent Ordinance amounts to state interference in religious affairs, undermining the autonomy of the current temple management committee.
It argued that there was no compelling reason for the state government to issue such an Ordinance, and that the government had offered no sufficient justification for taking over control of the temple’s administration.
The petition, filed by advocate Sankalp Goswami, said that the provisions of the Ordinance infringes the right of the Haridasi/Sakhi Sampraday to manage its own affairs in the matter of religion and right of members of the denomination to individually practise, profess and propagate their religion by seeking to alter the essential religious practices, rituals, customs and traditions which will have an effect of displeasing the deity and would make the entire denomination extinct.
“Section 5 (1)(i), 5 (i), 6(8) of the Ordinance directly violates Article 26(c) and (d) inasmuch as it permanently takes away the right of administration from the religious denomination altogether and vests it in non-denominational secular authority. Thus, in the cloak of better management, the Ordinance travelling beyond regulation has completely taken over the administration and management from the religious denomination and created a new body where the religious denomination has been reduced to redundancy,” said a plea, adding that the temple is neither public property nor a state-owned trust.
(IANS)
