New Delhi: India's richest temple Tirupati Devasthanam feels that faith cannot be held ransom to fluctuations in public policy and wants the government to allow devotees to use scrapped Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes for their daily worship.
“We are planning to request the government to allow pilgrims to use old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currencies for some more time. It is the only money they have,” Chintala Ramachandra Reddy, trustee of Tirumala Tirupati Devesthanam Board and Telangana MLA, told News18.
On an average about a lakh devotees visit Tirupati daily and the per capita expenditure – entry ticket, cost of prasad etc – is estimated at Rs 300, contributing Rs 3 crore every day to the coffers of India’s richest temple. The anonymous donations made to the temple hundi is over and above that.
Reddy said that Tirupati is a government administered temple and that the transactions here are not commercial. “We do no business transactions there. Donation or hundi collection is a secret thing. The entire amount is deposited in the banks on a daily basis. Money is safe there,” he said.
Reddy said that the rise could be on account of rich devotees dumping the now-scrapped notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 into the donation box.
However, he refused to give an idea of the approximate rise in collection saying he was not in a position to know about the exact figures.
“There is no ban on devotees dropping Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes in the Hundi. The government has not instructed us not to do that. Secondly, whatever the devotees offer is a personal thing. They do it secretly and no one questions them or keeps track of them. It is a matter of their faith. There is no way we can prevent them from doing that,” he said.
The trustee said that there had been a slight decline in the number of visitors since last week. “On an average one lakh people visit the temple every day. There is a decline in that. May be around 25-30%,” he said.
Another famous temple in Karnataka, the Kollur Mookambika temple, is also seeing dwindling devotee inflow post demonetization.
Speaking to News18 temple chief priest Manjunath Adiga said “the number has gone down in the last one week. We are now getting a few devotees. The demonetization is the main reason”. He said that since the donation is a secret thing, temple authorities can’t check if the devotees are still dropping old currencies.
“It is a government administered temple. There can be no scam. Whatever we get goes into the account of the temple. Every paisa is accounted for. If we still get old denomination currencies, we will deposit them in the banks,” he said.
One of the largest temples in North India, the Sri Krishna Temple, at Mathura has requested the devotees not to drop scrapped Rs.500 and Rs.1000 currency notes in its hundis.
At Tirupati, the board has also installed credit and debit card swiping machines for the smooth transaction of everyday temple proceedings.
TTD board is also stepping with philanthropic measures to help those in need on account of the cash crunch. For starters, it has doubled free water and food counters. “We know that there is an acute shortage of cash. Just to ensure that nobody goes back hungry, we have arranged more food counters” he said.
Last year, the Venkateshwara temple had received donations worth over Rs 2,400 crore and over Rs 1,000 crore was in the form of cash. Any surge in this year’s collection will be reflected in the account books of the temple only after the Financial Year ends in March next year, if the TTD board does reveal the figures before that on its own.
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