AP making TTD fund welfare programmes

During the Collectors’ Conference in May, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu stated that temple funds could be utilised in the same manner as the Christian missionaries use church funds for health, education and welfare programmes. It caused considerable consternation among the bureaucrats.

• Chandrababu Naidu has stated that TTD can take up welfare programmes
• If Christian missionaries use church funds, why not govt use temple funds?
• Cash-strapped State govt looks to benefit from huge contributions made by devotees
• TTD is being made to foot the bill for populist schemes of the government
• Already it is asked to bear establishment costs and salaries of priests of about 12,000 temples in the State
• No efforts being made to recover huge chunks of TTD lands under illegal occupation

Earlier governments also made attempts to make use of temple funds, which were found to be growing faster and higher than the State’s growth rates. Recently, the Chittoor District Collector requested the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) to take a lead in funding several populist programmes of the government such as Neeru-Chettu.

Though it was vouched that the temple funds would not be utilised under the ‘Haritha Project’, the TTD shortlisted 100 out of 139 tanks, whose renovation was taken up under the Tirupati Urban Development Authority (TUDA). Wide publicity was given to a programme that the TTD undertook to restore water bodies along the highways leading to the temple city, in an effort to improve the city’s aesthetics to offer respite to pilgrims.

From this, it is discernible that every government had been exploiting TTD funds for its populist programmes and the present government depends more on TTD for urban infrastructure development in Tirupati, as was pointed out by many pilgrims. According to a report of TTD, around 3.4 lakh acres land is owned by TTD temples in Visakhapatnam, Kakinada, Guntur, Kurnool, Warangal and Hyderabad, of which 60,483 acres are found to be illegally occupied by politicians and land grabbers.

This was also echoed by the Endowment Minister during the last budget session of February 2016. As per his statement, the TTD owned properties worth Rs.9,800 crore, of which only 4,657.51 acres of land were located in undivided AP and another 125.75 acres in Nepal, Delhi, Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Puducherry, Haryana and Odisha. Though the TTD has a separate law and property cell with three IAS and one IPS officer, it has failed to reclaim the properties under illegal occupation.

In July 2015, the AP government issued a diktat to the TTD to fund the establishment costs and salaries of priests of all 12,000 temples in all the 13 districts, resulting in TTD coughing up around Rs 250 crore for the corpus fund created in Endowment Department. Recently, the AP government also proposed to sell off all idle properties of temples to raise funds for development activities. As part of the order, the temple lands belonging to AP in Mahabalipuram, Tamil Nadu are being sold off.

As per the TTD reports, daily hundi collection of TTD is clocked at Rs 1.5 crore to Rs 2 crore besides offerings to the tune of 2 kg gold ornaments. The temple sees footfalls of one lakh devotees every day. It also has cash deposits worth Rs 10,000 crore and Rs 778.93 crore as interest earnings.

The annual budget of the TTD for 2016-17 is Rs 2,678 crore, an increase of 27% over the last year. TTD is estimated to earn Rs150 crore from sale of tonsured hair alone. It spends Rs 500 crore on salaries and also spends Rs 120 crore for propagation of Hindu religion. It earns Rs 175 crore from sale of Laddu Prasadam. It spent Rs 88 crore on education and Rs 62 crore on hospitals.

Under the Gold Monetisation Scheme, TTD has so far deposited 4.3 tonnes of gold in SBI. Of the 750 tonnes of gold reserves in India, TTD alone accounts for around 300 tonnes, and sees a weekly offering of up to 10 kg of gold ornaments. Despite constitutional guarantees and the AP Endowment and Charities Act, many governments since 1984 have been trying to use TTD funds for the needs of the State.

The State government has directed TTD to keep its fixed deposits in the AP government treasury, instead of in commercial banks. The N T Rama Rao government even offered to pay the TTD the same rate of interest as paid by commercial banks, towards the funds deposited in the state account.

At present, AP has been a cash-strapped state with a legacy of Rs 13,000 crore deficit. But, its own tax revenue had gone up from Rs 29,857 crore to Rs 44,423 crore in 2015-16. However, non-tax revenue and regular annual flow from the Centre were at Rs 5,341 crore and Rs 40,104 crore respectively. In view of this, the TTD is likely to be asked to fund all the needs of the Tirupati municipality and also those of Chittoor district.

Though there is no clear idea of how TTD funds will be utilised by the cash-strapped AP government, one thing is certain. Money managers and financial experts are coming up with many devious designs to partake of the huge contributions made by devotees to TTD in the form of gold and cash in order to fulfil the populist poll promises of the ruling parties.

By Gudipati Rajendera Kumar