Devotees of Lord Venkateswara of the famous hill shrine at nearby Tirumala can soon make their cash offerings to the Lord using their mobile phones.
The Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD), which manages the cash-rich temple, is all set to introduce a ‘mobile phone Hundi’ that would enable the devotees send their offerings to Lord Venkateswara using the balance in their pre-paid account, top TTD officials told reporters here.
Under the system, to be implemented in association with a private company and a nationalised bank, the amount offered to the Lord would be debited from the balance available in the devotee’s pre-paid account and credited to TTD Mobile Phone Hundi bank account, TTD Board Chairman, K. Bapiraju and Executive Officer, L.V. Subrahmanyam said.
The procedure for making the cash offering would be announced later, they said.
Already the temple has a ‘e-hundi’ facility through which online donations can be made by devotees by accessing the TTD web portal.
The Lord Venkateswara temple nets an annual income of over Rs.2,000 crore from various sources, including sale of darshan tickets, offerings of cash and precious articles made by the millions of devotees in the hundi and the interest on deposits with the nationalised banks.
————————-PTI