1. Four persons claiming themselves to be worshippers of a temple applied for leave to institute a suit for settling a scheme for administration and management of the temple Leave was granted by the District judge as provided in S.92 of the Code of Civil Procedure (for short'the Cods'). The petitioner herein opposed the application for leave and hence he is aggrieved as the lower court granted leave.

2. The scheme is for the administration of "Kozhuvalloor Bhagavathi Temple". It is claimed that the said temple originally belonged to the Illom of which the persons who applied for leave are members. Under a partition arrangement, the senior most male member of the Illom was authorised to manage and administer the affairs of the temple. According to the applicants, the earlier efforts to confer the power of temple administration on the Hindu public of the locality did not succeed due to rivalry among them and the affairs of the temple reached a torpid stags when bickerings persisted for long. It is contended that a public religious trust has been created for the temple and it is for the administration of the said trust that a scheme has become a pressing need. Hence the applicator seeking leave to institute a suit. Petitioner, while resisting the application for leave, contended that the temple is being managed by N.S.S. Karayogam pursuant to a grant made by alt members of the Kozhuvalloor Madom conferring management of the temple on the aforesaid body.

3. Learned District Judge perused the averments set out in the draft plaint produced. As the suit is for settlement of a scheme for the administration of the temple, learned District Judge accorded leave on a prima facie satisfaction that a public trust of religious nature does exist in respect of the temple properties.

4. Learned counsel for the petitioner contended that leave ought to have been refused by the District judge for the main reason that a suit in respect of the temple properties, without the deity (or idol) on the party array, is cot maintainable. The draft plain contains names of eleven persons, but none of them represents the temple or the deity. The contention is that settlement of any scheme for the temple properties would be ineffective as the temple can at any time adopt the stand that it won't abide by such scheme.

5. The decisions of the courts in India have almost uniformly held that a Hindu idol is a juristic person in whom the dedicated property vests. The Privy Council has also accorded the same status to a Hindu idol in Promotha v. Pradyumna (L R.52 A A. 245). The Privy Council has held that a Hindu idol is a juristic person and it has juridical status with the power of suing and being sued The following passage is extracted from B. K. Mukherjee on The Hindu Law of Religious and Charitable Trusts (at page 157):

"When property is given absolutely by a pious Hindu for worship of an idol, the property vests in the idol itself as a juristic person. This view, as I have explained in the first lecture, is quite in accordance with Hindu ideas and has been uniformly accepted in a long series of decisions of different High Courts in India as well as by the Judicial Committee".

The Supreme Court has recognised the aforesaid legal status for a Hindu idol. It was held in Official Trustee v C.I. T. ((1974) 2 S.C. R 583) that a Hindu deity is a juristic person capable of holding property. In Deck Nandan v. Muralidkar (AIR 1975 S C. 133) Supreme Court held that an idol of a temple is a juristic person capable of holding property and the properties endowed for the temple vest in the idol. In Jogendra Nath Naskar v. C.I.T. (AIR 1969 S. C. 1089) a distinction was drawn between the spiritual and legal aspects of the Hindu idol. From the spiritual stand point the idol may be a symbol of the supreme God-head intended to invoke a sense of the vast and intimate reality, and as such the deity stands as the representative and symbol of the supernatural being. From the lega