NRI Donation Makes Tirumala Richer By 14 Crores

Tirupati: The richest temple in India, Lord Venkateshwara temple, got donation offerings of a sum of Rs 14 crore to be used for welfare purpose. Two US-based NRI entrepreneurs have made a princely donation of Rs. 14 crores to the famous hill shrine of Lord Venkateswara at nearby Tirumala on Friday.

The two devotees, who wished to be anonymous, made the offering on the auspicious day of Goddess Sri Varalakshmi Vratham festival. This is the second straight year the two have made a similar offering.

In July last year, they had donated Rs. 13.5 crore to the shrine with a request to use it for different TTD trusts.

After offering prayers with their family members at the cash-rich hill shrine, they handed over a demand draft for Rs. 14 crore to AV Dharma Reddy, the Special Officer of Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD). The TTD is an independent trust which manages the over 2,000 year old Venkateswara Temple at Tirumala, Andhra Pradesh, which is one of the world's richest Hindu temples.

On Thursday, a devotee, hailing from Hyderabad made an offering of Rs 1.11 crore to the famous hill shrine of Lord Venkateswara. He made a request to use the fund for the temple-run pilgrim free meal trust.

Yugameti Rami Reddy, with his family, after offering worship at the shrine, handed over a demand draft for Rs 1.11 crore. The devotee requested the TTD chairman to use the donation for the TTD-run Sri Venkateswara Annaprasadam Trust.

Since 1985, about one lakh free meals, on an average, have been served to the devotees every day by making use of the annual interest drawn from accumulations of over Rs 1,000 crore donations made by philanthropists to the trust through banks.

Meanwhile, for the financial year 2018-19, a sum of Rs 507 crore has been deposited in the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams's (TTD) corpus fund.

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