Sabarimala earnings falls by 92%, TDB turns to different states
Express News Service
KOCHI: Landing the funds of the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) within the doldrums, the annual earnings generated by the Sabarimala Lord Ayyappa temple has dropped by a whopping 92.2 per cent within the wake of the Covid pandemic. The hill shrine’s income — which stood at Rs 269 crore in 2019-20 — has nosedived to a meagre Rs 21 crore this yr.
The Board, which depends on the temple’s two-month annual pilgrimage to fulfill administrative bills of the 1,248 temples beneath its ambit, has resorted to knocking on the doorways of devotees and neighbouring states to salvage the state of affairs.Including the employees’s wage, the Board wants at the least `40 crore a month to run all 1,248 temples.
Though as much as 83 of those temples are self-reliant, the income from these temples have additionally diminished. The earnings, nonetheless, has shrunk to Rs 15-20 crore per 30 days, forcing the administration to discover different choices.
“This is an unprecedented situation. Though the government has already given us `70 crore, we plan to ask for more. The widening revenue-to-expenditure gap has forced us to resort to austerity measures,” stated N Vasu, TDB president.
Most pilgrims who go to the temple are from neighbouring states like Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. “The Board is planning to approach the rich devotees and governments of these states for support. There are also plans to retrench around 200 temporary employees as a cost-cutting measure,” Vasu stated.
Pilgrims’ choices to be mortgaged
Another plan is to mortgage the gold supplied by devotees with the Reserve Bank of India to avail a mortgage. Bronze utensils and lamps can be auctioned to lift funds. “The process of assessing the gold and bronze stock is under way,” the TDB chief stated, including {that a} technique to cut back bills and enhance non-pooja income would even be launched quickly. The scheme to hunt help from devotees can be launched in February, he stated.
Till 2017-18, round 1-1.5 lakh pilgrims used to go to Sabarimala day by day throughout the 60-day pilgrimage season. This yr, when the pilgrimage season started on November 16, the federal government restricted the variety of pilgrims to 1,000 on weekdays and a couple of,000 on weekends in view of Covid. The quantity was later raised to 2,000 on weekdays and three,000 on weekends from December 1, and additional enhanced to five,000 a day from January 1.
The pandemic is simply the newest in a collection of unlucky occasions that had been impacting the TDB adversely over the previous few years. The Board had incurred an enormous setback in 2018-19, within the wake of violent protests by some Hindu organisations following the Supreme Court order on September 28, 2018, permitting girls of all ages to enter the hill shrine. The floods had additionally inflicted a blow to its earnings.
pilgrimage season income
2020-21 Rs 21.17 crore2019-20 Rs 269.37 crore2018-19 Rs 179.22 crore2017-18 Rs 277.96 crore
Auction of shops2020-21 – Rs 4 crore2019-20 – Rs 45 croreOfferings (Kanikka)2020-21 – Rs 8.62 crore2019-20 – Rs 97.46 crore2018-19 – Rs 72 crore
