A Hin­du tem­ple un­der con­struc­tion on Petrotrin lands in Bar­rack­pore is now be­ing van­dal­ized.

Con­struc­tion of the Swa­mi Sivanan­da Se­va Ashram be­gan a year ago with­out any ap­provals from the Pe­nal/ Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty, Wa­ter and Sewage Au­thor­i­ty and Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ing Lim­it­ed, the um­brel­la com­pa­ny which re­placed Petrotrin.

Ma Tapasya, one of the spir­i­tu­al heads of the or­gan­i­sa­tion ad­mit­ted to Guardian Me­dia that no ap­provals were grant­ed for con­struc­tion but she said a sworn af­fi­davit was giv­en to them by the orig­i­nal lease­hold­er of the land, grant­i­ng them au­tho­ri­sa­tion to use the agri­cul­tur­al land for re­li­gious pur­pos­es.

Al­though she did not pro­vide any doc­u­ments, Tapasya said the fam­i­ly who grant­ed them per­mis­sion to build was the Ram­lal fam­i­ly.

She said they planned to build a home for bat­tered women and a holis­tic youth cen­tre.

“Since we start­ed con­struc­tion, we have been get­ting ver­bal abuse from peo­ple in the vil­lage “ she added.

She not­ed that all the gal­va­nize sheets from the roof of the tem­ple were stolen. She al­so said van­dals chopped up the wa­ter lines and have been curs­ing her.

Asked why she built on the lands with­out ap­proval, Tapasya said they were in the process of hav­ing the lease trans­ferred from Ram­lal to Spir­i­tu­al head of the ashram Swa­mi Ra­manan­da Saraswati.

Mean­while Saraswati said his or­gan­i­sa­tion had its head­quar­ters in In­dia and had an in­ter­est in build­ing a branch in Bar­rack­pore since 2005.

He said the Ram­lal fam­i­ly gave the go-ahead to build and af­ter years of run­ning around at Petrotrin they fi­nal­ly de­cid­ed to con­struct de­spite hav­ing no ap­provals.

Al­though they have been told that con­struc­tion was il­le­gal, wrong and was a bad re­flec­tion on their re­li­gious or­gan­i­sa­tion, Saraswati said, “Yes, it is Petrotrin’s land. We got no no­tice to stop build­ing. We start­ed in this vil­lage in 2001. The same peo­ple giv­ing us prob­lems to­day were once mem­bers. We have a doc­u­ment from 2005 and 2006, where they trans­ferred the lease agree­ment to me. I had a meet­ing yes­ter­day and was told it is not Petrotrin who is the own­er. I am ut­ter­ly con­fused as to who the landown­ers re­al­ly are,” he added.

Saraswati ex­plained that he went ahead and built the struc­ture be­cause he had been on the land for 16 years.

“We sub­mit­ted the doc­u­ments to Petrotrin since 2005 and they have not re­spond­ed to us. I have been vis­it­ing the of­fice in Pointe-a-Pierre, Clarke Road and Pa­lo Seco. When we did the con­se­cra­tion of this land, the of­fi­cials of Petrotrin were here and the trac­tors were here for nine days and no one in­di­cat­ed that we not sup­posed to be here,” Saraswati added.

How­ev­er vil­lagers of Mus­sarap Trace said they were op­posed to out­siders com­ing in­to their vil­lage to grab land.

In­di­ra Boodoo said the youth from the area used to play on the recre­ation ground near the area where the ashram was be­ing built but they were now be­ing chased away by of­fi­cials.

“They want to build a youth cen­tre but they de­priv­ing our chil­dren from us­ing the ground. They just want the land. They came here one year now and build­ing in our vil­lage with­out per­mis­sion. There was nev­er any Ram­lal fam­i­ly own­ing this land. This is Petrotrin land. I am leas­ing land from Petrotrin and I don’t know any Ram­lal fam­i­ly who leased that land,” she added.

She said if they want­ed to build they could go high­er up on the hill and leave the recre­ation ground alone.

“Our chil­dren can­not play foot­ball or crick­et. What they want the young peo­ple to do. Go and smoke drugs? Leave our recre­ation ground alone,” she added.

Petrotrin in a state­ment last year re­mind­ed peo­ple to avoid the unau­tho­rized oc­cu­pa­tion of its lands and or in­ter­ac­tions with its many in­stal­la­tions.

Petrotrin served a Fi­nal Cease and De­sist no­tice to a church lo­cat­ed op­po­site the Ashram.

The com­pa­ny stat­ed that all the lands were free­hold and en­cour­aged vil­lagers to re­port to the Com­pa­ny’s of­fices any il­le­gal oc­cu­pa­tion of land so that in­ves­ti­ga­tions could be done.

Of­fi­cials from the com­pa­ny re­spond­ed to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions on the is­sue yes­ter­day, say­ing they would give a de­tailed re­sponse some­time to­day.