Hyderabad: A professor, two principals, three lecturers, one deputy executive officer are among 18 Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) employees barred from the Lord Venkateswara temple and any rituals or religious activities associated with TTD-run shrines.
The employees–identified as non-Hindu or not entirely Hindu–also include an assistant executive officer, three nurses, a radiographer and some lower-rung staff like a hostel worker, an electrician and an office subordinate.
A 1 February memo from TTD, the custodian of the Lord Venkateshwara temple and 60 other temples, said the disciplinary action against the employees was aimed at curtailing their non-Hindu religious activities.
In addition to managing temples, TTD also runs several hospitals, schools and colleges, including Delhi’s Sri Venkateswara College and the Sri Venkateswara Institute of Medical Sciences, a sophisticated super specialty hospital at Tirupati modelled on AIIMS, New Delhi.
The organisation employs thousands of people and has an annual budget of over Rs 5,000 crore.
The affected academics are posted at Tirupati’s SV Ayurvedic College, Sri Padmavati Women’s Degree and PG College, SGS Arts College, SPW Polytechnic College and SV Arts College. These institutes are all administered by TTD.
The three nurses work at BIRRD Hospital in Tirupati. The deputy executive officer is in TTD’s welfare department, while the AEO is in the auctions wing.
ThePrint is withholding their names to protect their identity.
Longstanding controversy
The employment of non-Hindus has been a raging issue at TTD, a world-famous Hindu pilgrimage centre, for over a decade.
A few years ago, videos purportedly from 2017 surfaced on social media, showing some senior TTD employees attending Sunday mass at churches and even using TTD-provided official cars to get there.
After public outrage over hurt Hindu sentiments and protests by Hindu rights groups, show cause notices were issued to around 45 employees at various levels.
The staff—many of whom had been employed in non-religious services like sanitation, nursing, and gardening, for many years, some even decades—approached the Andhra Pradesh High Court alleging discrimination. In February 2018, the court granted them relief from dismissal, until further orders.
A plan to shift TTD’s non-Hindu employees to Andhra Pradesh government departments was reportedly mooted then that year, during the Telugu Desam Party’s (TDP) earlier tenure, but it failed to materialise.
The fresh disciplinary move comes about three months after a new TTD board was constituted in November under the chairmanship of B.R. Naidu, chairman of popular Telugu news channel TV5 and supporter of Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu.
The memo said the punitive action was in response to the employees’ adherence to non-Hindu faiths while simultaneously participating in Hindu religious fairs, festivals, and functions conducted by TTD—an act the temple authority said “impacts the sanctity, sentiments, and beliefs of crores of Hindu devotees”.
“It has been proved that the 18 TTD employees are practicing and participating in non-Hindu religious activities, though they have taken the oath before the photograph/idol of Lord Sri Venkateswara Swamy stating that they will follow the Hindu Dharma (religion) and Hindu traditions only,” TTD executive officer (EO) Syamala Rao said in the memo.
The notice, a copy of which is with ThePrint, said the identified employees had sworn they would not follow non-Hindu religious activities in compliance with the 1989 endowments department rules.
Though found to have violated the rules–“instances noticed of them still practicing and participating in non-Hindu religious activities, demeaning the prestige of Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams”–the listed employees will apparently remain in TTD employment.
The notice stops short of implementing a resolution approved by the new board to allow all non-Hindu employees to either take voluntary retirement or be absorbed into the Tirupati municipality workforce or other suitable state government departments.
For now, the executive office has instructed the HR and other officials to review the listed employees’ present postings and “ensure that they are not posted in Tirumala, at any temple and any religious programme-related work”.
“If any of the above employees presently working in the above said posts/places, transfer them from such religiously sensitive places immediately,” ordered EO Rao.
The EO also asked the heads of TTD departments and institutions “not to post/depute the above employees to any of the temple-related duties, any religious processions, programmes, fairs and festivals of TTD temples”.
When pointed out that these employees are posted in non-religious works, a TTD official said that “it is to confirm that they, under any circumstances from now on, are not given assignments at the temples”.
“During the Brahmotsavams, and other popular festivities, when devotee numbers swell, many TTD employees in non-religious activities like those listed above are deputed on the hill to cater to the pilgrim rush,” the official told ThePrint.
When the trust board met in November, it identified around 30 such non-Hindu employees. Sources said some might have retired since then while in some cases, there was insufficient evidence to confirm the employees’ religious faith.
State Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders are, however, pressing for the total removal of all non-Hindu employees from TTD employment.
“It is evident they made a mockery of the rules and the oath they took in the name of the almighty Lord Venkateswara. As resolved in the trust board meeting, let these employees, and if there are more like them, be given VRS or absorbed into Tirupati municipality or other government departments,” said Vishnu Vardhan Reddy, vice-president of the Andhra Pradesh BJP.
The TTD employs around 6,600 permanent and 14,000 contract and outsourced staff, according to temple officials.
Bhanu Prakash Reddy, one of the TTD board members and a state BJP leader, told ThePrint the number of non-Hindus among them could be over a thousand, including contractual staff.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)
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