A Little Story on Body Guard Muneeswaran Temple
Baskar Seshadri
With regard to the Bodyguard Muneeswaran temple tender issue there were questions raised by few friends and I am to share the input that this portion of the temple was originally started in 1860.
The story goes to say that a Britisher went around from erstwhile madras on a mission and before his venture started out he was asked by some locals to pray and he did not heeded to their request. The next day after he met with an accident and villagers went again and told that it was the wrath of the God. Then after the villagers narrated the sequences he agreed with half minded state and permitted a small settlement of temple.
This property was later shifted to pallavan estate and the original name of the temple was called Kottaisaamy Koil. This was controlled by the treasury dept. of the erstwhile Madras Rajdhaani and later it was named as Body Guard Muneeswaran. The officials trustee of Tamilnadu which is functioning under the monitoring Powers of the Madras High Court Controls the temple even today. This has no connection with the state government in any manner and HRCE Has no say over this.
The temple was managed by a private person and when the popularity grew many outsiders joined the tender process leaving the first family to be away from the contest. However the Madras High court was kind enough to permit the first family to join the process but the tender was unsuccessful as nobody came forward to bid a whooping sum of Rs. 1 Crore and forty lakhs. Now the same old family is maintaining the temple and this is the second time the tender had failed.
The OTTN has to revise tender guidelines to make it reasonable and participant- friendly. Till such time the issue will never see the light.
