HR&CE Department saw remarkable growth under Dravidian model government: T.N. CM Stalin
Speaking at a free mass wedding event organised for 32 couples in Chennai, Mr. Stalin said a total of 2,376 free mass weddings have been conducted through the department in the last four years, including the 576 ceremonies held on Wednesday.
Highlighting some of the department's achievements, Mr. Stalin said consecration ceremonies had been conducted in 3,177 temples, while 7,655.75 acres of encroached temple lands valued at ₹7,701 crore were retrieved across 997 temples. A total of 2.03 lakh acres of temple land have been surveyed and renovation works are under way at 26,000 temples at an estimated cost of ₹6,000 crore.
He said the State advisory committee has approved repair works for 12,876 temples and a total of ₹425 crore has been allocated for restoring temples that are over 1,000 years old while preserving their heritage. The department has appointed 29 trained persons from all castes as priests and 46 Othuvars, including 12 women.
The corpus fund under the 'Oru Kaala Poojai' scheme has been increased to ₹2.5 lakh, benefitting more than 18,000 temples. The government is also providing monthly honorariums to priests and educational scholarships to their children pursuing higher studies, he said.
'The Dravidian model government is working with an inclusive spirit of everything for everyone. However, some individuals who were driven by hate and a divisive agenda are unable to accept our accomplishments. True devotees have appreciated the initiatives undertaken by the government,' he said, adding that his government would continue working for the welfare of devotees.
Ministers K.N. Nehru, Ma. Subramanian, and P.K. Sekarbabu and officials of the HR&CE Department were among others present.
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Hindustan Times
13 hours ago
- Hindustan Times
Leaders weigh in on what OPS' exit from NDA means for TN parties
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New Indian Express
14 hours ago
- New Indian Express
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Scroll.in
15 hours ago
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August nonfiction: Six new books that talk about the shadow of India's past on its present
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Drawing on archival materials from India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, London, and Singapore, Kalyani Ramnath shows how decolonisation was ultimately marked not only by shipwrecked empires and nation-states assembled and ordered from the debris of imperial collapse, but also by these forgotten stories of wartime displacements, their unintended consequences, and long afterlives. Nautch Boy: A Memoir of My Life in the Kothas, Manish Gaekwad A sweet-faced, quiet boy dressed in matching pink shorts and a top poses demurely for a photograph in a kotha, holding a flower vase with plastic white daisies in it. Powdered, scented women around him sparkle and pirouette like movie stars on the silver screen. The boy looks at them in awe. Will he be able to join them in this evening of glamour and music? When will he become a nautch boy? His dream is jinxed by his courtesan mother Rekhabai's ambition to secure his future away from every last thing that ties him to the kotha. But can he silence the music in his veins? Sent off to a boarding school in the hills, the boy learns to balance the two worlds – he can undulate his hips to popular Hindi songs like his mother but also recite by heart the poems of Rossetti and Shelley. Nautch Boy is Manish Gaekwad's account of being born and raised in a disrespected environment at odds with his privileged education. He finds his vocation as a reporter, screenwriter and a novelist, and eventually replaces that flower vase of fake white daisies with colourful stories of love, laughter and decay from the kothas.
