The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) with a young head has commenced the exercise to enlist support of gold reserves of Indian temples to improve its debt and reserve position.
But the move aimed improving the Rupee value Vs Dollar is caught up in a vicious political vortex.
According to a recent survey on gold reserves held by Indians individually at their homes it has been identified that almost 30,000 tons of gold was lying idle and unaccounted.
However the RBI’s gold reserves were just 700 tones kept against foreign exchange accounts.
Rupee value had nosedived against the Dollar in view of the mismatch in Gold reserves and exchange accounts.
Last week RBI approached the TTD, the administrative authority of the temple shrine of Tirumala and also Amritsar.
This week it has now sought the details of the stock of gold in the possession of temple Padmanabha at Trivandrum from its board.
Top official of the famous Travancore Devasom Board which also controls the world famous Sabarimala temple said a letter had been received from the RBI seeking details of gold stocks it holds. RBI officials however said that the RBI has no plans to buy gold, and this was just a statistical exercise."
Incidentally, a Supreme Court committee had, in July 2011, stumbled upon six vaults at the Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple in the heart of the state capital of Thiruvananthapuram.
With only vault B left unopened yet, the treasure found in the other five vaults has been estimated at over Rs.1 lakh crore.
Similarly following a AP high court direction the TTD which controlled Tirumala shrine of Lord Venkateswara had commenced cataloging of all gold jewelry and reserves of the hoary temple to which kings, Emperors and also several Muslim chieftains had donated gold, diamonds.
Though the quantum of TTD gold jewelry is kept a secret, the temple authorities say that nearly 5 to 6 tons of gold contributed in small jewelry forms by common devotees was kept as gold reserves in five nationalized banks.
Besides these the gold, diamonds, silver and used only for the deity is said to be worth over Rs.52,000 crore weighing over 500 tones and most of the jewels like swords, crowns are price less.
In 1985 TDP chief N T Rama Rao had raised a public furor by seeking TTD to deposit its gold and cash reserved in Government treasury for 'use of welfare of people programs'.
But courts struck off the Government move and came to rescue of temples and public wealth.
