Temple politics threatening to derail relocation agreed on 4 years ago

SUBANG JAYA: A developer that owns a plot of land occupied by a Hindu temple in a corner of Subang Jaya is now in a fix, as an internal dispute between two parties in the temple is threatening a deviation from a court’s consent order requiring them to relocate.

The Sri Maha Mariamman temple in Seafield, USJ 25, is due for relocation as part of a win-win court solution.

Now, one of the parties to the case is refusing to abide by the relocation order recorded in the High Court in 2014.


One City Development, the company which owns the private land, said it hoped to see a peaceful conclusion to the issue.

“We have done everything we can to make sure everyone is happy and we just want to move on,” its director Yaw Sheng Fung told FMT.

Besides One City, the case involved the Selangor state government and two claimants to the temple management, K Chellappa and M Nagaraju, who eventually agreed to hand back the land to One City after the company agreed to donate RM1.5 million to build a new temple on a nearby plot.

Chellappa and Nagaraju had earlier been locked in another court battle over control of the temple.
Chellappa was subsequently declared the lawful party to manage the temple. However, Nagaraju has refused to comply with the court order.

Yaw said his company had spared no expense to ensure a peaceful resolution.

Initially, the temple was to be relocated to a small plot of land measuring 15,000 sq ft at USJ 25, but the temple management later decided it was better to move to a bigger plot of land in USJ 23, measuring over one acre.

The temple agreed to give up its rights to the plot of land in USJ 25 in exchange for an extra RM1 million given by One City for the benefit of the temple.

“I believe we have done everything by the book and have been considerate and fair to all parties. We complied with all legal processes, we engaged all the stakeholders from the temple management to the authorities, we have done our best to facilitate the relocation of the temple,” said Yaw.


It was previously reported that a tense standoff over the relocation of the temple on Oct 26 had been diffused after One City agreed to postpone the relocation to a later date.


Source : https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2018/11/12/temple-politics-threatening-to-derail-relocation-agreed-on-4-years-ago/