Lamenting Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy’s choice for members for the TTD Trust Board, convenor of the Temples Protection Movement and priest of Chilkur Balaji temple C S. Rangarajan on Wednesday said it was unfortunate that politicians and businessmen would ‘boss over’ devotees.
Referring to the government decision to increase the number of Board members from 19 to 29, he said going by the list of names announced by the government, it was clear that it wanted to accommodate more politicians. “The Andhra Pradesh government seems to be repeating the mistakes of the past governments by appointing industrialists and people accused of offences,” he said.
He said people who expected transparency from the Jagan government were let down.
He said politicisation and commercialisation was destroying Tirumala. This, despite a constant fight urging the governments to keep the sanctity of the temple trust boards intact by associating people with a spiritual bent of mind. Persons associated with temple boards should be aware of the rituals and customs.
He said if the government could not respect the sentiments of crores of Hindus, it should leave the temples alone, just like in the case of institutions run by the minority communities.
