Tirupati awash with Rs 50 crore demonetised cash offerings

TIRUPATI (ANDHRA PRADESH): The world famous Tirupati temple in Andhra Pradesh is awash with Rs 50 croredemonetised cash offerings, which it continued to receive from the devotees, but could not utilise.

"Though the Central government had demonetisedRs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes on November 8, 2016, devotees continued to offer demonetised notes," said a TTD official.

As a result, the temple in southern Andhra Pradesh received 1.8 lakh notes of Rs 1,000, amounting to Rs 18 crore, and 6.34 lakh notes of Rs 500, amounting to Rs 31.7 crore. All the offered demonetised notes amounted to a total of around Rs 50 crore.

Though replete with old cash, Tirupati, one of the richest temples in the world, could not make use of it as scrapped notes have stopped being a legal tender for four years already.

Unable to monetise the huge amount of delegitimised cash, TirumalaTirupatiDevasthanams (TTD) Chairman, Y.V. Subba Reddy, has requested Union Finance Minister NirmalaSitharaman to enable the temple to deposit the old money with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) or any other commercial one to monetise that amount.

"Once monetised, TTD will use it to fund several spiritual and welfare activities," the official said.

Regarding the old notes, TTD had already written to the Union Finance Ministry and the RBI in 2017 but did not receive a favourable response. (IANS)

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