Apex Court appoints two panels on Padmanabhaswamy temple treasure

The Supreme Court today appointed two committees to supervise the discovery and protection of the huge wealth recently uncovered in the vaults of the Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple at Thiruvananthapuram.

A five-member committee of experts headed by the Director General of the National Museum, C V Ananda Bose, is to make an inventory of the treasure and supervise its preservation. The panel will consist of representatives of the Archaeological Survey of India and Reserve Bank of India.

The bench of judges R V Raveendran and A K Patnaik also appointed a three-member committee to oversee the work of unearthing of temple assets. This committee will have a retired judge of the Kerala high court, M N Krishnan; the head of the erstwhile ruling house of Travancore, Marthanda Varma; and a government representative of the rank of a secretary.

The court made it clear that the expert committee is to report only to it. It asked the media not to speculate on the worth of the precious assets discovered by a former team appointed by the court. It wanted the panel to sort the assets into three categories — those with heritage value, those which can be used for regular worship in the temple and those having no monetary value.

The court made several other incidental directions to protect the assets and retain the sanctity of the findings. No unauthorised person will be allowed to be present at the site of unearthing of the assets and the entire process would be videographed and photographed.

The judges felt since the state government and the temple authorities had agreed the assets belonged to the temple, there was no need for further proceedings in the case. The original suit was filed in the public interest by a petitioner who died very recently. Counsel for this petitioner argued there were constitutional issues to be sorted. Article 366 of the country’s Constitution deals with the former rulers and their right to succession. Though the main petitioner has died, there are others who wanted to continue with the case.

It may be recalled that the temple is still officially the responsibility of the erstwhile royal house of Travancore. Thursday’s order was passed on an application filed by Marthanda Varma and other royal family members, challenging a Kerala HC ruling of January 31, which had ordered the takeover of the assets and management of the shrine by the state.