Around 500 shops, including restaurants, opened their shops here on Saturday and demanded a one-year rent waiver from the Kutralanatha Swamy Temple administration during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The shop owners presented the temple administration with a 10-point charter of demands.
Speaking to reporters, Kavaiah, president of Courtallam Shopkeepers’ Welfare Association, said that the temple administration owns 152 shops at different locations in the city and rents them out in different categories.
For example, in some shops run by an individual, the agreement was made between the temple administration and the tenant. In other cases, where a shop was run by two persons as partners and if one of them died, the legal heirs of the deceased partner were not treated as tenants.
The temple administration has terminated 80 such shops and directed them to clear the dues and surrender the allotment, he said, adding that the members of the association wanted the allotment to be renewed in the name of the legal heirs and that continuity in the business be ensured.
He further said that the temple administration had been collecting rent during the pandemic while the government had imposed a curfew during the outbreak. Hence, the tenants had applied for rent waiver in the past.
Similarly, the shopkeepers said that when the rent for 2022 had not been fixed, the temple administration unilaterally fixed it and issued a demand notice for payment of the rent from July 1, 2022 to July 31, 2024. This autocratic move affected many shopkeepers and they therefore demanded a change.
Hardship for visitors
The one-day morning-to-evening strike by shopkeepers has hit the visitors of Courtallam hard. Not a single restaurant was open near the falls and people had to endure untold hardships. Many children and elderly people who had visited the falls and planned to stay till Monday were looking for shops but all the shops were closed.
Local authorities have not made any alternative arrangements and visitors have had a tough time. Only those staying in private resorts and guesthouses had access to food, while the public staying in lodges could only wait until 6pm when shops reopened on a limited basis, authorities added.
