Tirupati Trust gets its FCRA registration back; renewed for five years

As reported earlier, in its communications with the Ministry of Home Affairs, the TTD had been pointing out that it was the divergence of regulations between the FCRA Department and the Andhra Pradesh Charitable and Hindu Religious Institutions Endowments Act (APCHR) -- under which it was governed -- that had led to the discrepancies in its accounting.

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The temple at Tirumala, the richest temple in the world with a turnover of over Rs 3,000 crore per annum. (File)

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A day after The Indian Express report (March 27, 2023) on the accumulated foreign currency funds of the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD), the Ministry of Home Affairs has renewed its registration under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA).

An electronic intimation received by the TTD shows that its registration — pending since July 17, 2019 — has been “approved by the competent authority” for a five-year period with a retrospective effect from the year 2020.

It was in 2019 when it applied for a renewal, that the FCRA registration that the TTD was placed under “suspension” and two notices of payment of penalties were received by the Trust, considered the richest religious Trust in the country.

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The latest penalty notice received by the TTD was on March 5, 2023, when it was asked to pay penalties to the tune of Rs 3.19 crore for not submitting its Annual Returns in the prescribed manner.

As reported earlier, in its communications with the Ministry of Home Affairs, the TTD had been pointing out that it was the divergence of regulations between the FCRA Department and the Andhra Pradesh Charitable and Hindu Religious Institutions Endowments Act (APCHR) — under which it was governed — that had led to the discrepancies in its accounting.

The problems of the TTD over foreign currency receipts had mounted since following the amended rules of the FCRA in 2020, the State Bank of India had turned down their requests of depositing foreign currency notes dropped in Hundi’s — without the names of donors — in the designated bank account.

The result: Foreign currency donations adding up to Rs 26.86 crore have piled up in over a year. The TTD recently sent the Home Ministry the break-up that includes US Dollars worth Rs 11.50 crore; Malaysian Ringgits Rs 5.93 crore and Singapore Dollars Rs 4.06 crore.

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Last year, according to reports, TTD received Rs 1,450 crore as total “Hundi collections”.

Ritu Sarin

Ritu Sarin is Executive Editor (News and Investigations) at The Indian Express group. Her areas of specialisation include internal security, money laundering and corruption. Sarin is one of India’s most renowned reporters and has a career in journalism of over four decades. She is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) since 1999 and since early 2023, a member of its Board of Directors. She has also been a founder member of the ICIJ Network Committee (INC). She has, to begin with, alone, and later led teams which have worked on ICIJ’s Offshore Leaks, Swiss Leaks, the Pulitzer Prize winning Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, Implant Files, Fincen Files, Pandora Papers, the Uber Files and Deforestation Inc. She has conducted investigative journalism workshops and addressed investigative journalism conferences with a specialisation on collaborative journalism in several countries. ... Read More

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