Temple services set to go online soon

​Hyderabad: Eight major temples in Telangana including Yadadri and Vemulawada will soon have online booking services for the convenience of devotees, who plan their pilgrimages to these shrines.

The Endowments Department officials are taking steps to bring online facilities in temples on the lines of the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD). It has come to the notice of the department that the devotees have been facing inconvenience during festival times and other important occasions. 

The department has initiated online services in Sri Ganesh Temple in Secunderabad on an experimental basis. Endowments Minister A Indrakaran Reddy asked the officials to have online services in full scale in the temple by May end and later extend these services in eight major temples in the State. 

“By making services online, the number of devotees coming to these temples will increase and also it bring transparency and income to the temples,” said Reddy. The online services include darshan, accommodation and other sevas. The department will also accept donations through online mode.

The Minister said from January next year, online services will be started in temples including Yadadri, Vemulawada, Bhadrachalam, Basar and other temples. The State government has taken up construction of Yadadri temple on a big scale and the Rs 1,800 crore project is expected to be completed by December 2018. The Yadadri Temple Development Authority (YTDA) has been renovating the Yadadri Temple and developing it as a shrine like Tirumala in Andhra Pradesh.

Apart from the online services in temples, the government is also planning to have e-office system. This system is likely to be in place from June 1 where the file-tracking would be online. The Information and Technology department had been working on the software for implementing this, the Minister said.

The Minister also asked the officials to speed up the development works of Basar Saraswati temple. He asked them to get ready with a master plan, which could be shown to Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao for his approval. The government has allocated Rs 50 crore for the temple, he recalled.