Ex-chief secretary requests CM to ensure Rs 10k salary to archakas
VIJAYAWADA: Former chief secretary IYR Krishna Rao on Wednesday wrote a letter to Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu requesting him to continue paying the remuneration of Rs 10,000 to archakas working in temples in rural areas. In a press release issued here, Krishna Rao said that as per Supreme Court guidelines, a fund of Rs 100 crore was created for payment of fair and proper remuneration to the archakas, which was long pending with the government.
Of the total, the contribution by the bigger temples was transferred to this fund. TTD was requested to contribute Rs 100 crores and Commissioner of Endowments was to collect a total sum of Rs 50 crores from bigger temples so as to constitute a fund of about Rs 250 crores, the interest of which will be utilised properly to pay the remuneration of the Dharmik staff in the temples.
The Dharmik staff include archakas and others who are involved in the upkeep of the temple and were there from time immemorial for which they are different from the other secular staff. As against the Rs 250 crore corpus, the Government has transferred Rs 100 crores to the fund. The TTD after a lot of persuasion has given Rs 75 crores so far in three installments.
The Commissioner of Endowments who was entrusted to collect Rs 50 crores has been able to give about Rs 25 crores, thus making a corpus of about Rs 200 crores as against Rs 250 crores envisaged by the Government. Rao underlined the need to strengthen the corpus further by requesting the TTD to add another Rs 200 crore and the Commissioner of Endowments to mobilise another Rs 50 crores. Rao emphasized how all this would conveniently make a corpus of Rs 500 crore,the interest on which would be sufficient to give archakas a minimum remuneration of Rs 10,000 irrespective of the status of the temple.