NEW DELHI: A petition has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking directions to the Center and state governments to constitute a bench or expert committee to review wages and other benefits given to priests, sevdars and temple staff in state-controlled temples.
The PIL filed by advocate Ashwini Upadhyay said the writ petition seeks directions to the Center and provides for the formation of a judicial panel or expert committee to review wages and other benefits given to priests and temple staff in state-controlled temples.
“The petitioner also seeks to declare that priests and temple employees are ‘employees’ under Section 2 of the Wages Act, 2019. The petitioner submits that once the State assumes administrative, economic and financial control over temples, an employer-employee relationship arises and depriving priests and temple employees of decent wages violates the right to earn a living guaranteed under Section 21.”
Upadhyay said the cause of action dates back to April 4, when he went to Varanasi to attend a public program and after performing ‘Rudrabhishek’ at the state-controlled Kashi Vishwanath Temple, he learned that even the minimum wage to live with dignity was not being given to the priests and temple staff.
“Recently, priests and temple staff in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana staged a large-scale protest demanding minimum wages. The priests and temple staff do not even get the minimum wages prescribed by the state for unskilled and semi-skilled workers. This is systematic exploitation. The state is behaving like a model employer by managing endowments, but is violating the Minimum Wages Act and the State Policy Directive Principles,” the report said.
The plea also said that the continued denial of minimum wage with inflation-adjusted cost of living index for 2026 has forced the petitioner to seek judicial intervention to prevent further marginalization of priests and temple staff.
Upadhyay also said that the precarious nature of livelihood was blatantly exposed on February 7, 2025, when the Tamil Nadu administration issued a circular at the ‘Dhandayuthapani Swamy Temple’ in Madurai, strictly prohibiting priests from accepting ‘dakshina’ in ‘aarti dishes’.
“It is necessary to point out that priests in such temples often do not receive any official salary from the state and are completely dependent on ‘dakshina’; the state administrative order directly threatens them with starvation. Although it was withdrawn due to public outrage, the incident highlights the arbitrary power of the state over the survival of priests. This is also the bitter truth that states control thousands of temples but not a single mosque or church,” the PSP alleged.
Instead, the petition sought to direct the Center and states to take appropriate steps for the welfare of priests, sevdars and other temple employees in the spirit of previous judgments of the Allahabad High Court.
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