He said a seven-year-long study had shown that there are 3,200 temples in Malaysia, the majority of them unregistered.

Elanjelian said those without proper registration were built decades ago by plantation workers for their own use “and they were not familiar with the need to register the temple”.

He said the research study, from 2005 to 2012, was carried out with the cooperation of the Malaysia Hindu Sangam.

Conflicts between local authorities and devotees and management committees of Hindu temples and shrines have often occurred when the land is required for development.

Elanjelian said the best way to deal with the decades-old problem was to set up a Hindu endowment board in every state, similar to those in Singapore and Penang.

“It should be run by practising Hindus who should not be politically aligned; professionals who are able to solve temple issues within the state,” he added.

Noting that some of the land on which the temples had been built were subsequently sold off for development to take place, he said problems would arise when developers cleared the land.

He said there was a proposal during the time of the Pakatan Harapan government for a Hindu Endowment Board to be set up to regulate temple matters.

He was commenting on a call by MIC president S Vigneswaran to the Indian community to work with the relevant parties to resolve the issue of illegally constructed Hindu temples.

Vigneswaran told Hindus they had to shoulder the blame for incidents of Hindu temples being demolished by the authorities because many had been built illegally.

PKR deputy information chief G Manivannan said proper guidelines on how temple committees could acquire the land on which the temples stood would be useful in mitigating the problem.

MIC vice president Sivarraajh Chandran said almost half of the temples identified through the survey did not have land ownership.

He said if the land on which a temple stood belonged to the government, the MIC could help resolve the matter but sometimes the land was privately owned.

“We can only facilitate talks with landowners not to break down the temple and to provide enough time to relocate the temple,” he said.

Malaysia Hindu Sangam president RS Mohan Shan told FMT that it had helped save many temples from demolition through mediation. However, not all temples with problems would seek its help.

“In any dispute, we want to create a win-win situation where both parties agree and get something in return,” said Mohan.