Pressure on TTD to take over area temples

Tirupati: Tirumala-Tirupati Devasthanams is said to be under pressure from politicians to take over temples in their areas which do not have enough revenue generation. The TTD feels this could put avoidable additional burden on them.

The TTD itself had suffered a setback as its own revenue had taken a nosedive due to Covid-19 pandemic. It had to restrict the number of devotees for darshan in order to follow the health protocols suggested by the Centre. The TTD chairman and the board have been mulling to find ways to cut down expenditure.

Hence any decision to merge more temples would be a drain on the funds of the TTD as it will have to bear the expenditure on annual maintenance of those temples and also pay the salaries and meet expenditure incurred on account of rituals.

In the past, across the state from Vizag to Chittoor district many local temples were merged with TTD under pressure from political leaders' pressure. Now again the pressure on TTD is mounting, sources say. Recently TTD took over the two temples in Chittoor district.

To put an end to this trend, TTD officials are mulling to bring new guidelines for taking over the temples. Executive Officer of the TTD K S Jawahar Reddy told The Hans India that he had asked the officials to prepare a new policy with regard to taking over of temples and the draft policy would be presented to the board for approval.