India’s richest temple trust is working on a plan to build grand Tirupati temples in every state. The idols of Lord Venkateswara Temple, synonymous with Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh, are being made across the country in several states like Jammu, Navi Mumbai, Gujarat and Chhattisgarh.
It is part of an ambitious plan by the world’s richest temple trust, Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD). Under this, the pan-India presence of Lord Balaji will be ensured by building at least one replica of the Tirupati temple in every state and union territory of India. The TTD Trust, established in 1933, initially managed the affairs of only a handful of temples, including the iconic Lord Venkateswara Swamy Temple at Tirumala, Sri Padmavathi Ammavari Temple at Tiruchanur and Sri Govindaraja Swamy Temple at Tirupati.
But in the nine decades since the Trust was established, it has established 58 temples dedicated to Lord Venkateswara across India. However, most of them are located in the southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Tamil Nadu.
TTD was the first to start acquisitions for the construction of temples in Andhra. The first temple outside this region was built by the Trust in the year 1969 at Rishikesh in Uttarakhand.
After this, in the year 2019, Lord Venkateswara Temple was established in Kanyakumari and expanded. Recently, on June 8, a temple was opened in Jammu, where the Home Minister of the country, Amit Shah, had also come to pay obeisance.
The trust is considering building three more temples at Gandhinagar in Gujarat, Raipur in Chhattisgarh and Bihar, for which discussions are also going on with the Nitish Kumar government. The Trust has also recently laid the foundation stone of Lord Balaji Temple in Maharashtra. The state government allotted 10 acres of prime land worth around Rs 600 crore in Navi Mumbai, where the TTD would spend around Rs 70 crore on the construction of the temple. ( PLC/GT )
