The Madras High Court on Tuesday upheld a single-judge order allowing the lighting of a lamp at a stone pillar on Thiruparankundram hill near Madurai in Tamil Nadu, Bar and Bench reported.

The hillock has the Arulmigu Subramania Swamy temple and the Sikkandar Badhusha dargah.

The verdict was delivered on appeals challenging a judgement passed by the single judge, GR Swaminathan, after some temple devotees had sought permission to light a lamp at the stone pillar, Bar and Bench reported.

On December 1, Swaminathan ruled that the stone pillar was a deepathoon, or a structure designed to hold lamps, and that the temple should restore the tradition of lighting the lamp at the site.

He had also held that the practice would not infringe upon the religious rights of the nearby Muslim shrine.

The Tamil Nadu government, the temple authorities and the dargah management, among others, had challenged the order, raising concerns about law and order, ownership of the site and the nature of the ritual that had been allowed.

On Tuesday, a bench of Justices G Jayachandran and KK Ramakrishnan upheld Swaminathan’s ruling.

The bench observed that the stone pillar is located on the land that belongs to the Subramania Swamy temple.

It directed the temple management to light the lamp during the Karthigai Deepam festival.

However, the court said that the lamp should be lit only by members of the temple management and that the public would not be allowed to accompany them.

“Number of team members to be decided in consultation with [the Archaeological Survey of India] and the police,” Bar and Bench quoted the High Court as saying. “District collector shall coordinate and supervise the event.”

The bench also rejected the argument that lighting the lamp could lead to a breakdown of law and order.

“Ridiculous and hard to believe the fear of mighty state that by allowing representatives of [temple management] to light a lamp at the stone pillar on a particular day in a year will cause disturbance to public peace,” Live Law quoted the bench as saying. “It may happen only if such a disturbance is sponsored by the state itself.”

The bench added: “We pray that no state should stoop to that level to achieve their political agenda.”

It observed that the “apprehension of law and order was an imaginary ghost created by state authorities for their convenience to put one community against the other under suspicion”.

The court added that the district administration should have treated the matter as an opportunity to bridge differences between the communities through mediation, Live Law reported.

On December 9, a group of Opposition MPs submitted an impeachment notice to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla against Swaminathan, saying that the judge’s recent orders and actions have been viewed as “disruptive to social harmony and detrimental to integrity of the judiciary”.

The impeachment notice had come against the backdrop of Swaminathan’s order in the Thiruparankundram matter.

The MPs had stated that Swaminathan’s conduct had raised serious questions regarding the impartiality, transparency and secular functioning of the judiciary. They alleged that the judge had shown undue favouritism towards a senior advocate and lawyers from a particular community in deciding cases.

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