Chennai: The Tamilnadu government has decided to melt into gold bars the tiny bits of jewellery offered by devotees at temples run by the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments department and deposit them in banks to raise funds for development projects and welfare schemes at the temples.
Though this move has drawn criticism from certain quarters, officials said only an old scheme is being revived to increase revenues of temples and everything will be done in transparent manner as the entire excercise will be monitored by retired judges.
“Moreover, the income generated from this scheme will be used for temple related expenses only,” they said.
“This scheme has been in force since 1978 and it went on smoothly till 2010. Tiruttani Sri Subramanya Swamy Temple was the last from where the excessive jewels were made into gold bars. After that, for some reason, the scheme was stopped. As a result, large quantities of gold jewels have piled up in many temples and verification was also not done for these jewels,” they said.
Officials added that tiny jewels and other pieces of gold offered by devotees serve no purpose and lie idle.
“Since the department is planning many welfare programmes, they will be now be used to generate revenue,” they said.
Devotees have said utmost transparency and monitoring should be there to ensure that no malpractice happens at any level.