VIJAYAWADA: Minister for Endowments Vellampalli Srinivasa Rao conducted a State-level review meeting with endowment officials on Friday and said the government is committed to protecting temple lands from encroachers and will reconstruct temples demolished in the name of development.
Alleging that the previous Telugu Desam government denotified hundreds of acres belonging to the endowments department and benefited their benamies by leasing them at cheaper prices, the minister assured that the lands will be taken back and stringent action initiated against the culprits.
The minister also said a proposal was formulated to appoint a senior IPS officer in order to create necessary mechanisms and enforcement to protect temple lands across the State. “In this regard, we already requested Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy to allot/ form a wing to enforce and bring back those lands. “We denotified 10 acres of temple land in Surayapalem which was given on lease to a private person during the TDP regime,” Srinivasa Rao said.
Taking a dig at the TDP president and former chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu for his ‘wrong’ decisions of demolishing as many as 29 temples in the city during Krishna Pushkarams in 2016, the minister said instructions were given to the officials concerned to identify and rebuild them in the same place or near to the earlier one as early as possible.
“Naidu has no respect for religious sentiments of the people. For Krishna Pushkarams, he (Naidu) ordered officials to dismantle historical temples without caring for the concerns of public. The people of Vijayawada are attached to temples and gods. How can he demolish temples?,” the minister questioned.
Srinivasa Rao also said the YSRC government allotted `234 crore was allotted for performing ‘doopa-deepa naivedyam’ rituals in the temples.