Even as the Travancore Royalty had sought the Supreme Court's intervention against opening of the mysterious 'Cellar-B' of Padmanabha Swamy temple where huge wealth was recovered form other chambers earlier, the apex court on Friday took serious objection to its raising 'non-legal' issues.
A bench of Justices R.V. Raveendran and A.K. Patnaik, which had passed several interim orders since the recovery of huge wealth from the secrete chambers of the temple, asked counsel K.K. Venugopal, who is appearing for royal family, how the matter could be decided by devaprasnam when the petitioner had approached the court for judicial orders.
The bench further observed, "Is the case before us or devaprasnam?"
Besides, the Royalty had raised the issues of possible 'curse' of Lord Padmanabha Swamy if Cellar-B was opened without his permission and unnecessary “stress and pressure” being built on the family __ the custodian of the temple __ ever since the recovery of the wealth.
The bench went on to ask: “If they felt that they were under any kind of “pressure” then why should not they allow a government agency to manage the temple.”
When Mr Venugopal referred to the recent statement of leader of Opposition in Kerala Assembly and former chief minister Mr V.S. Achuthanandan that temple’s valuable articles were being taken away from the shrine by the royals, the bench said, “Why (they are) unnecessarily giving reasons to somebody to make statements that article were being removed from the temple.”
“We would like to have a proper security system in the temple in the larger public interest,” the judges told the counsel for the royals.