Top monk wants strict oversight of land given for monastic activities

His Holiness the Supreme Patriarch Somdet Phra Ariyawongsagatayarn has instructed the Sangha Supreme Council (SSC) to help the agency ensure that such land was used strictly for monastic activities and they were not too big, ARLO secretary-general Vinaroj Supsongsuk said on Monday.
He said the Supreme Patriarch had assigned the SSC to help the ARLO ensure the land use was according to the law and was within the management ability of the resident monks.
To apply for establishment of such monastic sites on ARLO land plots, the applicants – being legitimate temples – must submit a space-use plan, including the number of monks who will stay there, the capacity to take care of the site and the communities around them.
In cases of major temples asking to use large plots of ARLO lands, the Supreme Patriarch has instructed that the rationale for such use, its impacts on the environment and farming, whether the temple and communities could harmoniously coexist to take care of nature, as well as the temple’s capacity to take care of the site must be taken into consideration, he said.
A “Sangkhawat” monastery zone must not exceed 100 rai while the size of the “Buddha Uthayan” area, which could also be used by the public within the monastic site, would depend on the temple’s capacity to take care of it, he said. If any of the sites were seen to be too big, the space would be reclaimed by the ARLO to allocate to farmers.
So far, most of the sites were each under 15 rai, which is within the ARLO secretary-general’s power to approve for monastic activities, he said. Larger sites would be under the Agriculture Minister-chaired ARLO committee’s scrutiny and taken up on a case-by-case basis.
Vinaroj made the comment while talking to reporters about Agriculture Minister Grisada Boonrach’s instruction last week to set up a fact-finding committee to investigate within 30 days if the Fa Prathan Plantation and Flora Park had encroached on a combined 400 rai of ARLO land in Nakhon Ratchasima’s Wang Nam Khiao district. If the two sites were occupied by private companies for commercial activities, which would be against the ARLO’s objective to let poor farmers use the land, they would be asked to leave and the land would be reclaimed for allocation to registered farmers. He said the fact-finding panel would try to get clarity on the situation and look up related laws for further action.