Lakes shrink as ‘faith’ spreads, temples take over water bodies

Temples taking up pavement spaceis commonplace across Chennai, but places of worship have also gobbled up precious water bodies in spite of interventions by the Madras high court to protect them.
Illegal temples along the Chitlapakkam and Sembakkam lakes have been thriving for decades. The Sembakkam lake has been home to the Santhi Durgai Amman temple for almost 20 years.Its compound wall begins at a demarcation line drawn by the public works department to indicate the lake boundary — thetempleisclearly within the perimeter. The temple’s structure has undergone changes over the years and the SVV Trust, which controls the shrine, has even built a mandapam 100ft into the lake.
The trust, which is run by S Pandian, has funded the construction of the Dharma Shastha temple and mandapam, and the Sai Baba temple and mandapam, a community centre at Ramakrishnapuram in Chitlapakkam, both on a flood channel. It has also built a newspaper reading room named after the late A P J Abdul Kalam. All these structures were built either on bunds of the lake or on the lake bed.
When the Kancheepuram district administration last week started demolition of the illegal edifices near the Chitlapakkam lake, the SVV Trust managed to buy a week’s time so it could shift the idols and valuables from the temples.
But residents told TOI that the temple’s backers have initiated a signature campaign, banking on public faith, to pressure the government and save the structures from being razed.
“These are not my temples, they belong to the people,” Pandian told TOI by phone. “The temple has been around for 40 years. We have glorified the deity by making the structure prominent.”
Tambaram revenue divisional officer Chandrasekhar saidthedistrict administration would not penalise Pandian, or the trust, for profiting from government land.
Sources in the revenue department said there are no explicit provisions to penalise people who build illegal temples; only demolition charges can be recovered from them.
This is not unexpected, according to local resident K Ramakrishna, as the system went out of its way to help Pandian and let the temples flourish.
“The trust has constructed a road into the Sembakkam lake to facilitate access to the temple,” Ramakrishna said. “The town panchayat officer admits that the trust built the road. So why did the authorities simply look on when they laid an illegal road?”
However, former AIADMK MP, C Rajendran, described Pandian as a “social worker”.
“Temples are almost always built on a site without a property deed. Not one temple in Chitlapakkam is built on proper land, except mine,” said Rajendran, patron of the Aalavettamman temple nearby.