Hyderabad: Plea to restore status of hereditary archakas

Hyderabad: The Temples' Protection Movement convenor and Chilkur Balaji temple chief priest C Rangarajan has urged the government to revive the hereditary archakatvam in ancient temples across the State.

He, along with MVR Sharma of 'Darshanam' magazine, G Nageswara Siddhanti and others, met Endowments Commissioner Anil Kumar on Thursday. Rangarajan said in view of certain happenings in the department due to which archakas were being troubled with petty cases by certain officials and were being suspended without any basis or policy. The archakas' victimisation came to fore. The commissioner was sympathetic to solve every one of them, he said.

The Chilkur priest said the State government has to notice the fact that the Supreme Court had positively responded to the writ petition of octogenarian M V Soundararajan in 1996 that traditional temples, rural temples would close down if the government insisted on stopping the rituals of hereditary archakas.

The Y S Rajasekara Reddy government had reinstated the archakas' services in 2007 through a legislation. Unfortunately, it is not yet implemented, Rangarajan said. In Telangana the succession and service rules for the hereditary archakas have not yet been implemented, but in the AP region, they have come into force through GO 439 dated October 21, 2019.

He pointed out that the State government was successfully implementing pay scales for archakas and temple employees; the solution to hereditary archakas was implementation of GO of succession rules which would solve their long pending problems. The commissioner gave a patient hearing and assured necessary action, he added.