The priest of popular Chilkur Balaji Temple in Hyderabad, Soundarrajan has filed a petition in High court that the Tirumala Tirupathi Devasthanam is due to the extent of Rs 1000 crore since 1987 . The court which heard the petition has given notices to TTD ,Ap Governmetn and also the Telangana Government.
Earlier the Telangana has demanded a share in the past revenues of the Tirupati temple, the country’s richest shrine located in Andhra Pradesh, signalling another point of contention stemming from the bifurcation.
The TRS government declared that it would strive to get its estimated share of Rs 241 crore from a charitable fund to which the temple authorities owed dues over the past 10 years.
The Tirumala-Tirupati Devasthanam (TTD), which runs the shrine, need not share its revenues with Telangana under the AP Reorganisation Act, the bifurcation law. But the provision is effective only from June this year, leaving open the scope for claims related to earlier allocations.
Telangana ministers said that according to the latest CAG report, the TTD owed Rs 576 crore to the “Common Good Fund” between 2003 and 2014. “Of this, Telangana’s share is around Rs 241 crore and we demand that the Chandrababu Naidu government of Andhra speed up the reimbursement,” said the Ministers.
The “Common Good Fund” was a corpus to which the TTD was required to contribute under law, with the state paying a matching amount. The money was meant for a variety of religious and charitable purposes, such as sprucing up pilgrimages and refurbishing temples and mosques.
The TRS government plans to develop Yadagirigutta, a shrine 40km from Hyderabad, into the “Tirupati” of Telangana”. Visiting the temple a few weeks ago, chief minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao had announced a yearly Rs 100-crore plan to develop guesthouses, gateways and other tourism facilities aimed at upgrading the centre into a Tirupati-like hub. Yadagirigutta’s presiding deity is Narasimhaswami, an avatar of Vishnu like Lord Venkateshwara of Tirupati.
The TTD, the temple board, has been placed under Schedule 7 of the AP Reorganisation Act. This covers items in which Telangana cannot claim a share, but it does not have retrospective effect. Funds worth Rs 31,000 crore are mentioned in this schedule, a finance department official said.
Schedule 8 of the law lists items in which Telangana has a share but the total amount in this is lesser at Rs 25,000 crore, the official added.
The Tirupati temple has an annual budget of Rs 2,400 crore. It has Rs 8,500 crore in fixed deposits, 12 tonnes of gold — including ornaments — belonging to the deity and another three tonnes collected from devotees’ donations in the hundis. The TTD has provided financial assistance to several other shrines, including 42 in Telangana and 61 in Andhra.
