The Endowments Department is working on introducing online services such as booking ‘sevas’, ‘darsan’, accommodation, wherever it is available, and making donations in all major temples across Telangana, particularly in temples where the visit of devotees is high, as it is being done in Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD).
To begin with, the online services would be introduced on an experimental basis in Secunderabad Ganesh temple soon. Minister for Endowments A. Indrakaran Reddy stated after holding a review meeting here on Monday that the decision was taken, considering the inconvenience and problems being faced by devotees during the festival and other religious days.
After studying the pitfalls, if any, in the delivery of online services, it would be introduced in major temples, including Yadadri, Vemulawada, Bhadrachalam, Basar and others from January next in a phased manner. The Minister stated that the devotees could select their convenient day and time of darsan and sevas and could also make donations through the online services.
The Minister expressed the hope that the temples could draw more devotees if they were developed as part of tourism promotion by sprucing up the facilities.
Meanwhile, the Minister directed the officials to introduce bio-metric system for recording attendance of the Endowments Department employees and priests (archakas) by taking the assistance of the IT Department. He also wanted the officials to hoist a special website for the Commissionerate of Endowments and separate websites for all major temples.
The Minister asked the officials to take up digitisation of all records of the department.
