Tamil Nadu Government Converted Temple Jewellery Into Gold Bond
Update: 2022-06-17 12:15 IST
Chief minister M K Stalin hands over the gold bonds to temple authorities on Wednesday
The Tamil Nadu government began the monetisation of temple jewellery by transforming the gold jewellery into gold bond. It includes 27,250 grammes of gold from the Irukkankudi Mariamman temple in Virudhunagar district into gold bonds worth ten crore rupees. On Wednesday, Chief Minister M K Stalin presented up the gold bonds to temple officials.
In October of last year, the Tamil Nadu government declared that they would monetize unused gold in temples in the form of jewellery and bars, purify it, and then turn it into gold bars and deposit it in nationalised banks.
On April 1, this year, a total of 27,250g of gold was separated and delivered to a central government facility. On April 29, the gold bars were deposited in the SBI's bullion branch in Mumbai. The temple would earn a total of 24 lakh per year in interest from this gold investment.
Meanwhile, gold that had been donated to temples over the previous decade was appraised, and those that had not been used were transported to the Union government's gold purification factory and shaped into bars. The bars would generate cash for the temples, which could be utilised for a variety of purposes.
The temples were divided into three zones: Chennai, Trichy, and Madurai, with retired judges overseeing the procedures. On October 13, last year, the CM launched this initiative via video conferencing. Justice R Mala, a retired judge, was in charge of the Madurai zone's Irukkankudi temple gold conversion project.