Amaravati: Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy held a review meeting on Endowments Department and directed the officials to bring best practices in temples across the state, from online system to preparation of quality prasadam, being implemented in TTD, in other temples as well.
During the review meeting held at camp office here on Monday, the Chief Minister instructed the officials to ensure no scope for corruption in the department and said it can be achieved by introducing online system in temples. He said donors can contribute to any of the temples online and added to display boards with details of methods and procedures of online system. He instructed the officials to ensure that donations are used for the development of temples and not diverted for other causes. He said the system in other temples should be similar to that of TTD.
The Chief Minister said revenue from temples should be spent on development of temple ensuring no corruption and added to focus on regular maintenance of temples. For the first time, the state government has been spending nearly Rs 70 crore for development works at Kanaka Durga temple. He instructed the officials to focus on quality of accommodation and prasadam at temples. He instructed the officials to introduce the process of making laddus in tirumala to other temples also. He said to complete the formation of committees in temples so that monitoring of temples could be increased. He said to prepare master plans for all temples and added to prepare action plans for development of other major temples including Srisailam.
The Chief Minister instructed the officials to create awareness and provide training to temples Executive Officers on TTD maintenance practices and said quality standards should be followed in maintenance of temples and added to identify infrastructure problems and changes to be brought in temples and focus on them. He said auditing in temples should be transparent and directed the officials to take help of TTD for digitization process like online booking, kiosks, QR code payments, online room booking system etc. He instructed the officials to conduct survey and geo tag for temple lands to protect them.
He said the state government has installed over 47,000 CCTV cameras in about 18,000 temples for security and instructed the officials to install CCTVs at all temples. He instructed the officials to appoint an SP level officer for vigilance and security in the Endowments Department. He said the state government has quashed retirement of hereditary priests and it will be implemented to the rest as well and added that the salaries of the priests were also increased. He directed the officials to focus on allotting house sites to the priests.
Endowments Minister Vellampalli Srinivas, Land Administration Chief Commissioner Neerb kumar Prasad, Revenue Principal Secretary (Endowments) G Vani mohan, TTD EO K S Jawahar Reddy and EOs of various temples were present in the meeting.
