NEW DELHI: Tamil Nadu Hindu Religious & Charitable Endowments Commissioner questioned the expansive definition of ‘industry’ settled by Supreme Court in 1978 , saying how it can cover temples when most of them are maintained from the surplus money generated from donations received by a few of them.Appearing for the body which oversees administration, management and maintenance of Hindu religious institutions, temples and charitable endowments in TN, senior advocate Jaideep Gupta told a nine-judge bench led by CJI Surya Kant that the nature of activities carried out in a temple has nothing to do with industrial activity or disputes covered under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947.Gupta said industry must be a unit where the employer and employees collaborate to produce something for human need and it must have a commercial character or profit motive. “Can a temple be classified as an industry when there is no strike, lockout or retrenchment, which are the main subjects dealt with by the Act,” he asked. He said in Kerala, the Devaswom Board manages hundreds of temples from the surplus funds generated by three – Guruvayur temple, Sabarimala temple and the Padmanabhaswamy temple. “How the surplus money is used is a critical factor in determining whether an entity is a temple or not,” he said, adding that corporate entities spending 2% of average net profit of the last three years on CSR (corporate social responsibility) would not make them a charitable organisation.The bench, also comprising Justices B V Nagarathna, P S Narasimha, Dipankar Datta, Ujjal Bhuyan, S C Sharma, Joymalya Bagchi, Alok Aradhe and Vipul M Pancholi, said temples may be essentially for spiritual purposes, but they do also sell books and prasadam.
