Tirupati: The Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams’ financial stability lies threatened with spending on corpus and other investments drastically down from Rs 969 crore to Rs 78 crore in just five years, almost sliding towards a financial crisis.
The TTDs’ grand Rs 3,116 crore budget for 2019-20, which was released rece-ntly, has only allocated Rs 78 crore for depositing as corpus and other investment in banks, from where the board receives huge interests, which in turn is used to pay salaries and wages to its employees.
According to reports, the share of corpus and investments in 2014-15 was Rs 969 crore. It dipped to Rs 783 crore in 2015-16, Rs 475 crore in 2016-17, Rs 86 crore in 2018-19 and Rs 78 crore this year.
In general, the temple management receives huge revenue from the temple hundi in the form of offerings made by visiting pilgrims. Such revenue was being called capital income and used to be spent on development of fixed assets. The remaining amount was deposited in banks as corpus and other investments.
As per reports, it was estimated that revenue from the hundi would this year come to around Rs 1,231 crore, from Rs 1,206 the previous year.
The interest received on investments is the second major source of income for the TTD. The estimate on interest for 2019-20 was pegged at Rs 845.86 crore, followed by sale of laddu and other prasadams at Rs 270 crore, sale of special entry darshan and VIP tickets at Rs 235 crore, accommodati-on and rentals at Kaly-ana Mandapams across the country at Rs 105 crore.
The board treats the amount fetched from these sources as revenue income and it is used to pay salaries and wages to employees, procurement of provisions and paying electricity bills.
Though the interest being generated from the investments was increasing year after year, the corpus and other investments matching the rem-aining capital income was dipping for the past five years.
“Generating interest fr-om corpus and other investments is a must for the board,” senior Congress leader Mr P. Naveen Kumar Reddy said. “It will help the management run the organisation in a certain order even if the income from hundi dips in future. As the temple management is failing to increase corpus and investments for five years now, there is a danger to the TTD’s financial health and chances of a financial crisis lurk.”
He pointed at the board’s decision to allocate major funds for engineering work, maintenance of other temples across the country and construction of new Kalyana Mandapams and said these were white elephants eating into the capital income leading to decline in savings.
He also alleged that the board trustees were gaining sanctions for developments at their respective places and demanded that they show white papers on sanctions they received for construction of Kalyana Mandapams in their areas.
Financial experts feel the board must regulate spending on various works and go for savings by maintaining enough corpus and investments.
