Key Points

A Bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi also suggested appointing a committee headed by a retired High Court judge to supervise the temple's affairs until the validity of the recent Ordinance is adjudicated.

The Justice Kant-led Bench was dealing with multiple petitions opposing the Uttar Pradesh government's move to assume control of the temple's administration, which has traditionally been governed under a private management structure based on a 1939 scheme.

It said the proposed management committee could include the District Collector and other state government authorities, while emphasising that the rituals must continue in accordance with the traditions of the Haridasi Sampraday.

During the hearing, the apex court also questioned the "tearing hurry" in which the Uttar Pradesh government promulgated the Shri Bankey Bihari Ji Temple Trust Ordinance, 2025. It took exception to the "clandestine manner" in which the state government obtained permission from the Supreme Court through its May 15 judgment to use temple funds for the corridor development project.

Noting that the approval was obtained by filing an application in a pending civil dispute, the Justice Kant-led Bench orally remarked that the top court would consider recalling its earlier directions allowing the state government to use temple funds.

It adjourned the hearing on the pleas challenging the state government's recent Ordinance till Tuesday to allow Additional Solicitor General K.M. Nataraj time to seek instructions on its suggestion.

One of the pleas contended that the Shri Bankey Bihari Ji Temple Trust Ordinance, 2025, 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 clearly 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 totally 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