Yoursay: No easy resolutions in Seafield temple saga

YOURSAY | 'The courts have said relocate, so time to move out and move on.'

Temple saga could have been avoided with a stroke of the MB's pen

YTMQ: At the time of the application of conversion of the land from agricultural use to its present status, the state government had imposed the condition that developers had to allocate a five-acre space for a Tamil primary school and a one-acre space for the Seafield Sri Maha Mariamman temple at its present location.

The National Land Code provides that the state authority has the right to impose any condition on a land and that condition must be complied with.

What is baffling is why was the consent judgment recorded on behalf of the temple by someone who wasn't even a devotee and now has become untraceable?

And if the temple trustee had the advantage of having the above condition as part of the prerequisite for the land conversion, why did the trustee concerned settle for a mere RM1.5 million, considering the location of the temple?

EmEmKay: Plans to relocate the temple have been going on since 2007, after the land it is located on was purchased by One City Development Sdn Bhd.

In line with a March 11, 2014, consent judgment by the High Court in Shah Alam, the committee agreed to relocate the temple to USJ 23 as part of the settlement agreement. Just relocate – MIC politicians have entered the fray to instigate and flare up the matter to win the sympathy on Indians who have deserted them.

Anonymous_de5a54e7: When the Seafield temple was built in 1891, it was on government land. The fact that the temple already existed for more than 100 years should compel a responsible government to have alienated the land first and transferred it to the temple before alienating the rest of the land to the private company for development.

Anonymous 690791505470938: The Seafield temple has existed for more than a century. The company is not going to go bankrupt by donating this small piece of land.

Anonymous 2436471476414726: Hindraf 2.0 de facto leader P Uthayakumar’s open letter conveniently leaves out the fact that a court consent judgment was obtained in 2014.

In addition, the developer had donated a sum of RM1.5 million to the temple committee. This is on top of a plot of land 3km away that had been alienated for building a new temple.

Yet, you expect Selangor Menteri Besar Amirudin Shari to intervene to keep the temple in its present location. Violence could have been avoided if the temple committee and devotees keep to their end of the bargain.

You, Uthayakumar, have failed miserably to convince the temple committee to respect the court consent agreement.

Drngsc: Uthayakumar, how can you blame the menteri besar? That is not fair. The blame must be on the people who agreed to the court adjudication, then reneged on the settlement. If they did not wish a court settlement with cash as part of a settlement, then they should not have gone to court. Otherwise, they are making a mockery of the courts.

How can you not see that there is a settlement and now they have made a U-turn? That is just not right. You are being very unreasonable here. The problem is, there is now infighting among the two parties of the temple. You should advise them to obey the court order and move the temple as agreed. That is following the rule of law. Unless you are telling us not to obey courts and law?

Anonymous 2413381470634342: Uthayakumar should be helping the devotees establish new temples legally. Instead, small places of worship are often built on other people’s property illegally and then claim it to be theirs.

Wira: Uthayakumar, hasn't this issue been settled in court? Who took the RM1.5 million for relocation?

Manoharan Malayalam: Uthayakumar is wrong in this case. Does he think it is so easy for the state to compulsorily acquire the temple land?

Where is the money supposed to come from? Does he expect the federal government to print more money by hiking up deficit spending? How does that help the Indian poor he's so ardently fighting for when the purchasing power of their already meagre incomes gets further eroded through inflation?

Instead, the Selangor government should get the developer and current owner of the said land, One City, to simply gift the land to the temple permanently. That can't be so difficult.

After all, why should a 127-year old temple be expected to make way for the convenience of business and profit makers?

But most importantly, a Hindu temple is more than just a house of worship. It is, in fact, a place of abode for Hindu deities and therefore cannot be expected to move willy-nilly according to someone’s whims and fancies.

Mano: Uthayakumar, what you said in your open letter may be true for the Seafield temple and others with a definite history, but definitely not for all temples.

There are, we must admit, temples suddenly sprouting out nowhere, or a small shrine gradually increasing in size. This shouldn’t be the case. By the way, why are local councils not nipping this problem in the bud when these temples sprout?

Jefferson76: The developer should have known this would happen. They were aware of the temple on the land. The state government also knew. Neither did the right thing to alienate the land. It can still be done.

RKR: The previous temple management committee had sold the land to One City for a fortune. The new committee dug up some clause in the land code to argue that the 100-year old temple land cannot be sold to anyone. The old committee should have gazetted the land instead of selling it.

Abasir: All this talk about heeding the court judgment needs a response. Malaysians must remember that it was a court judgment that declared Anwar Ibrahim a sodomite and deserving jail time. And it was also a court that decided that the inspector-general of police locate the kidnapped daughter of M Indira Gandhi – a decision that was summarily ignored by the government without attracting any contempt charges.

Lawman66: So, we should disregard the court judgment? Whenever people riot, the solution is to give in to them? One Fire and Rescue Department officer is critically injured, this is due to people refusing to follow the rule of law. The last thing we need is more people, especially the government, disregarding the court’s ruling.

Anonymous: The root causes of the issue are the lack of regulation of religious premises, and non-Muslim places of worship, especially large and established ones, not being given permanent land titles. This situation is similar to Chinese and Tamil schools versus national schools.

Hence, these will be forced to be built further away from the city centre. This needs to be addressed with a national policy that won’t change, regardless of which party sits in Putrajaya.

Caring Citizens of Malaysia: With respect, Uthayakumar, this incident is not as easy to deal with as you make it out to be.

The land has been owned by One City since 2007. I don’t know how and what was agreed upon when the land was sold, and I understand that it was done during the BN era. However, what cannot be denied is that One City has all the legal documents to claim the land.

Yes, it is a sacred temple, a heritage of 127 years. But unless the present administration is willing to come up with a huge compensation for One City to forgo the land, it is still their right to claim and use the land.

Second, the party that hired gangsters to cause havoc is definitely in the wrong here; doubtless, they should be punished.

But on the other hand, there are a lot of parties, such as PAS, Umno and G3 that are on standby, looking for loopholes to pounce on and hold racist and bigoted rallies if any of their ‘privileges’ are perceived to be under threat. But there they are, these despicable thieves are ready to pounce.

If any minister of any other races comes out and helps or talks, the wolves will hunt. So it’s not as simple as a stroke of the pen like you think. Let’s give the police forces more time to solve this. If we entrust the present administration to change things, let’s give them more time to come up with a solution.

Rick Teo: Illegal temples without proper titles and illegal structures should be demolished. No compromise on this matter. No temple should be allowed to be built without council approval. Many of these temples are built on land that doesn’t even belong to them. - Mkini