CORRUPTION @ CHILKUR BALAJI

               

The Balaji Temple is situated at Chilkur, 25 kilometers from Hyderabad off the Vikarabad road and on the banks of Osman Sagar lake. Dedicated to Sri Balaji / Lord Venkateshwara, this enchanting temple was built in the south Indian style of temple architecture and hosts some of the most worshiped Hindu deities. Approximately 75,000 to 1,00,000 devotees visit the lord in a week. Generally temple gets heavy rush on Friday and Sunday .

A so-called important feature of the temple is that there is no hundi / offerings box. Instead, tradition states that the only fee the lord requires is for the devotee to make Parikrama / rounds of the temple, pradakshinas. The usual procedure is to take 11 pradakshinas and then express the wish. If the wish comes true the devotee shall promise to take 108 more pradakshinas and which most of the times comes true / granted. He is also called "VISA GOD", an urban legend states that those who pray and make the 11 pradakshinas with a VISA to USA / any other country will obviously be granted and will come back for his 108 Pradakshinas.

Whether or not a wish is really granted after the pilgrimage to the temple, pradakshinas are done is still open for debate. What is not, however, is the fact that Chilkur Balaji temple is one of Hyderabad’s enduring religious legacies.

The temple at Chilkur is managed by the hereditary trustee Sri M.V. Soundara Rajan and Sri C.S. Gopala Krishna. The entire family of the archaka, including the women have dedicated themselves to serve the Lord. FAITH IS GOD is the saying which practically works in EVERY temple. I visited d temple with my friends in 1997 for the first time primarily because it used to be a peaceful and away from the maddening urban crowds. It was such a serene and beautiful place and today after so many controversies and crowded devotees with their list of desires and wants has caught up with the urban madness. This temple is very old and has a history of around 600 yrs. There are n number of mysteries involved in this temple management.Recently many court cases has been registered against the archakas. My findings and my personal research has yielded the following shocking / mind blowing facts which are ignored, and corruption prevails in a big way... No of Devotees/ month 75000 X 4 = 300,000 Coconuts per month 300,000 X 2 =600,000 600,000 X 0.75 Rs = Rs. 450,000 Parking per month 200,000 200,000 vehicles X Rs. 10 = Rs. 2,000,000 Sale of land 18 acres 16 acres X 1.5 crores = Rs. 24 cr Publications per month VAK 25,000 copies 25,000 X Rs. 5 =  Rs. 125,000 rent on shops let out per month 100 shops 100 X Rs 450 = Rs 45,000/  So total amounts involved per month is Rs. 26,20,000/- this without including the donations in cash and food grains. In the inception of temple in 1440 AD it was managed by the villagers and no brahmins are involved in day to day activites of temple. The temple has good amount of land as its property it had around 18 acres of land  The present so called trustee involved in temple activites since 60 odd years or so there used to be hundi for offerings which I have personally seen and have offered some money in hundi in years 1997 to 1999. The archakas are able to draw huge crowds by establishing faith in the minds and hearts of devotees is a good sign. The faith created by archakas attracted huge crowds  Due to sudden boom of real estate properties the lands in the area of moinabad and chilkur reached sky rocketing prices. Now the archakas are directly or indirectly involved in selling the lands to some third parties and the third parties acquired land and started using for their personal use. Now the temple is hardly having any land with it. The temple was under endowments department since very long years When endowments department started to take the temple under its control 100% because the temple started drawing huge crowds the archakas opposed and started agitations. in year 2005 or onwards to avoid GOVT to take over temple the archakas started a new concept called no hundi temple. The GOVT is having the receipts and payments account statement handwritten by archakas in yrs between 1920 to 2000 When no money is collected in the form of donations or so how is the temple running its daily activities? The archakas boasts that they are working free with out money. Which is suspicious? The house keeping people should be paid some money who is paying them? How are the basic bills like electricity and water being paid ? who is paying them How many years does archakas family to service to GOD without taking any offerings?what do they eat and how they make their ends meet? Devotees might be donating in kind...... When temple attract huge amount of crowd their might be huge offerings in form of kind. Sources say huge amount of ghee,food grains are received. Whether donations accepted in the form of cash or kind it is donations. This means indirectly archakas are accepting donations, though it called no hundi temple it is accepting good amount of donations. The food grains are arriving in huge stocks and who is taking care of them?Sources say these food grains are sold in market again in exchange of cash. Since 5 years many stores dealing with toys and pooja samagri and food outlets are established around temple premises. Approx 80 to 90 stores have come up. Sources say these shop keepers are paying Rs 400 to 500/- monthly rent to the archakas. Every devotee offers coconut to LORD and half is taken to Homes as prasadam and the other half is offered to the LORD which goes to the archakas. The coconuts collected in the week ends filling up atleast 2 small lorries and the money collected by selling such cocunuts is collected by archakas. The Diety is called VISA GOD many prospects who aim to go overseas visit this temple and By GOD's blessings they could be sucessful in getting visas. The people who are able to get visas send good amount of thanksgiving cheques as their courteousy to LORD and since it does not have a proper bank account; cheques which comes in dollars are encashased by archakas and their relatives. But archakas (sounder rajan ) family are native of tamilnadu and he left the job to start the service to GOD which seems appreciable but suspicious? The archakas are so powerful that they have misled the devotees and brought pressure on the Govt and a special G.O passed in assembly to exclude this temple from Endowments department. But still many many things seems to be unanswered.  With all due repect to the archakas and their services ..... I ask one question. All said and done dont we devotees need to know what is happening to the Lords offerings ?! Those offerings which are a result of all our faith.  With so much smoke screen and Iron curton at times it gets even the more difficult to believe in the people maintaining public funds. TRANSPARENCY is the NEED of the hour. I don't  deny the miracles happening by believing chilkur LORD but I think too much corrupted and too much money involved in running and maintaining this temple.Again I stress my old statement  MONEY CORRUPTS; even the most FAITHFUL are no EXCEPTION "WEALTH SPOILS EVERYONE."