Devotees donate Rs 2 cr to India’s richest temple in April under e-Hundi
TTD trust board chairman Y V Subba Reddy told reporters on Wednesday that despite the closure for darshans for such a long period, for the first time in its history, the temple had collected Rs 1.97 crore in April 2020 through “electronic hundi’ (e-hundi).
For almost two months now, devotees have not been able to pay obeisance at the Lord Venkateshwara temple at Tirumala in Andhra Pradesh’s Chittoor district due to the nationwide lockdown.
But that hasn’t stopped the devotees from donating money to the deity through electronic transfer.
Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) trust board chairman Y V Subba Reddy told reporters on Wednesday that despite the closure for darshans for such a long period, for the first time in its history, the temple had collected Rs 1.97 crore in April 2020 through “electronic hundi’ (e-hundi), a system to transfer cash offering to the deity through electronic methods.
“This was Rs 18 lakh more than the e-hundi collections made in the same month last year – the temple received Rs 1.79 crore in April 2019,” Reddy said.
The concept of e-Hundi was started by the TTD in January 2014 with the support of nationalised banks to enable devotees belonging to far-off places to make cash offering to Lord Venkateswara through electronic transfer methods including mobile applications like e-wallet, Paytm or Google Pay etc., without visiting the temple.
The temple maintains a separate account for e-hundi for which no service charge is collected. This facility is also available at Shirdi Sai Samsthan in Shirdi, Maharashtra and Siddhi Vinayak temple (Mumbai).
Subba Reddy said it was heartening to note that despite the lockdown restrictions, the devotees were generously offering money through e-hundi and displaying their devotion though they did not get to see the Lord for over 60 days as of now.
He said in view of the tremendous response to the e-hundi from devotees, the TTD had decided to resume sale of the famous “Laddu Prasadam of Tirumala” in two or three days at a discount of 50%.
“Instead of the regular price of Rs 50 per laddu weighing 175 grams, it will now be sold at Rs 25 per laddu. This discount will continue till the darshan of the Lord resumes after the lifting of lockdown,” he said.
The sale of laddu would be done at all TTD Kalyana Mandapams (Wedding halls) and information centres present in all 13 district headquarters in Andhra Pradesh, apart from those at Hyderabad, Chennai and Bengaluru state shortly”, he said.
Stating that there was still uncertainty over resumption of the darshan of Lord Venkateshwara, the TTD chairman it would depend on the central government’s decision to lift the lockdown. “We have been receiving several calls and mails from the devotees regularly on reopening of the temple for darshan, but we can’t take a decision until the Centre decides on the lockdown,” he said.
Reddy refuted the reports that the TTD was facing such a severe cash crunch that it had no money to maintain the temple administration and also pay staff salaries.
“There is no scarcity of funds and there will not be any problem to pay salaries and pensions to our employees as well for maintenance. We have paid salaries to the employees for March and April and have enough money to pay May salaries as well,” he asserted.
