News Brief
Tamil Nadu HRCE Department
In a Twitter poll conducted by Chanakyaa TV, a Tamil news portal, regarding the functioning of the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department (HRCE), an overwhelming 81.9 per cent of respondents said that the department is bad for temples.
The respondents were provided with two options — the functioning of the department is:
1) good for the people (makkaluku nallatu)
While the number of respondents, which is, 1,231 was not very large, it did show that a lot of people were not happy with the functioning of the department.
Here is a screenshot of the poll:
The poll comes at a time when the HR and CE department has regularly been in the news for the wrong reasons.
Some of the recent incidents are the usage of the umbrella of the temple deity to shield the Chief Minister's wife, Durga Stalin from rain and the alleged theft of gold coins donated to a temple by a department official.
This was seen as needless appeasement of the Christian minority by a minister who is supposed to look after the affairs of Hindu temples.