Madras High Court takes up suo motu PIL against unauthorised religious structures

The Madras High Court has taken up a suo motu writ petition to ensure no unauthorised temples, mosques, churches or such other religious institutions get constructed on public roads, streets, parks and so on in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.

First Division Bench of Chief Justice Manindra Mohan Shrivastava and Justice G. Arul Murugan have taken up the case to ensure strict compliance of the orders passed by the Supreme Court on January 31, 2018 against unauthorised religious structures.

The top court had directed all the States and union territories in the country to frame policies for removal/relocation/regularisation of unauthorised religious structures and requested the High Courts to supervise the process and ensure compliance.

Further, making it clear no new unauthorised construction should be allowed in future, the Supreme Court had said: “To ensure the implementation of directions issued by this court, consensus has been arrived at Bar and in our opinion, rightly, that should be supervised by the High Courts concerned.”

On finding that the Madras High Court had not registered any suo motu case in the last eight years, for implementing the top court’s orders, the Chief Justice had now directed the Registry to take up the present suo motu writ petition against the governments of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.

Tamil Nadu State Government Pleader A. Edwin Prabakar on Thursday told the Division Bench the State government had issued a Government Order on September 16, 2025 and laid down a Standard Operating Procedure for installation of statutes and such other structures.

He said, the government had also ordered constitution of district level and divisional level sub committees for scrutinising applications received from communal or religious organisations for installation of statues. He sought a week’s time to place a copy of the G.O. before the Division Bench.

Accepting his submissions, the Chief Justice’s Bench directed the High Court Registy to list the suo motu petition next on October 31. It also directed the counsel for the Government of Puducherry to submit the latter’s response too by the next date of hearing.