Reliance Industries Limited offered a donation of Rs.1.11 crore to the famous hill shrine of Lord Venkateshwara at Tirumala very recently. According to RIL’s representative, the company gave a demand draft of the amount to the special officer of Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD), AV Dharma Reddy. TTD governs the rich shrine.
RIL Want TTD To Utilize The Fund For Meal Trust
The representative said that the company has requested the Tirumalai trust to use the fund for the pilgrim free meal trust run by the temple. Through the meal scheme, the temple offers benefits to more than one lakh devotees on a daily basis at Tirumala Hills and other select places in Tirupati. These are the places run by the TTD through the interest generated on more than 1,000-crore corpus formed with the contribution of devotees since 1985.
Lakhs of people come to the temple every year for taking blessings from Lord Venkateshwara. There is a sort of madness among those who want to take the darshan by hook or crook. For that these devotees even pay a big amount and some of the fraudsters take advantage of these feelings of the pilgrims by giving them fake VIP passes at a huge price.
TTD Tightens Vigilance
According to the latest reports, the sleuths of TTD tightened their vigilance as more than 30 devotees were identified reportedly carrying the much-sought-after VIP darshan tickets. Incidentally, these devotees received the tickets from some middlemen who do not have any authority to issue such tickets.
The sleuths gathered the details from the devotees after allowing them to have darshan of their God. The sources said that the tickets were secured on the letterheads of various VIP’s, elected representatives and dignitaries. The vigilance officials have already submitted a list of 15 touts who are working unofficially as a private-public relations officers of various elected representatives.
