source: Eenadu, April 23, 2007

Temple properties

A temple in Tenali, Guntur (dist) owns a movie theater, it has been leased to some powerful people for last 30 years for Rs 30,000/- per year. They then subleased the same theatre fro Rs. 13,000,00 per year. The above lease is above to expire, the current powerful lease holders are trying to continue the same lease without any auction with the help of a district minister.

SItaramachandraswami temple in Ammapalli, near Hyderabad owns 200 acres of fertile land, worth many crores, you know how much lease the temple earns a year from these lands, and it is mere 2 lakhs.

Lakshmni Venkateswara temple in Kakinada own around 800 acres of Land, 400 acres of this leased for cultivation occupy coconut trees, the temple get paid Rs 26/- per acre, another 400 acres used to for
rice, the temple gets mere 2 or 3 sacks of rice.

Venakateswara Swami temple in Old Alwar, Rangareddy dist, owned land of 68 acres, the corrupt politicians administrators sold 64 acres and pocketed the money themselves, the Lord Venkateswara left with 4 acres
of land.

Lakshmi Narasimhaswami temple in Banjara Hills, Hyderabad had 48 acres of land, which is occupied corrupt land grabbers, now the temple cannot even afford money for daily expenses for the service of the Lord.

These are the some cases, thousands of temple properties been leased by powerful people for nominal amounts, then they sublease for a big profit. The government of Andhra Pradesh recognized the temple in the
state own 4.2 lakh acres of land out of which 1.11 lakh acres of land leased for income of 43 crores a year, another one lakh acres is under occupied cultivation by powerful people with the help of politicians
and corrupt officials.

Thousands of acres of temple land in cities & town are already occupied by powerful land grabbers. Now, the temple cannot afford the daily service of the GOD, they cannot afford the maintenance, or cannot afford to pay the temple priests.

No Action

The responsible officials are just ignoring, the politicians, senior officials are under political pressure and bribes are helping the land grabbers, leasing the temple properties to everyone on nominal amount, who then sublease them to make big profit. No one is caring for welfare of the temples.

Amendment to endowment Law

TRS MLA Mandadi Satyanarayana Reddy criticized the endowment department saying "the endowment department officials who need to take care of temple property and temples are only interested in making
money, these officers or the department never tried to spread the Dharma"