CPM Ministers on Sunday locked horns with the erstwhile royal family of Pandalam over the latter’s direction to the Sabrimala thantri (priest) that the temple should be closed down if women of menstruating age enter the shrine.
Last week, when police managed to take two young women near the temple, thantri Kandararu Rajeevaru had threatened to shut it down. The adamant stand of the thantri stemmed from a direction from the erstwhile royal family, which once owned the temple as its family property but handed it over to the government in 1949.