Puri: The Puri Jagannath Temple corpus fund worth Rs 548 crore will be kept in the State Bank of India (SBI) as fixed deposits at 5.18 per cent interest, Administrator (development) of Shree Jagannath Temple Administration (SJTA) Ajay Kumar Jena informed on Wednesday.
On March 23, the SJTA had decided to deposit Rs 115 crore temple fund with the Union Bank of India as a fixed deposit at an interest rate of 5.21 per cent after it won the bid among eight public sector banks.
Notably, the corpus fund had been with the SBI at a 3 per cent interest rate. To get more interest, the SJTA began the process of depositing the corpus fund of the temple to the tune of Rs 11 crore by inviting bids from 10 nationalised banks in January 2021. The bidding began this year.
The temple corpus fund includes Rs 2 crore as part of compensation given by the Health and Family Welfare Department towards the acquisition of the temple land for the Sri Jagannath Medical College and Hospital.
It is worth mentioning here that the SJTA had found itself in a spot after Yes Bank, where it had parked Rs 547 crore, was placed under a moratorium, a month after it had resolved to withdraw the amount after its maturity and shift it to nationalised banks in February 2020.
This had triggered sharp reactions from various quarters as to why such huge amounts were deposited in the private bank.
The meeting had decided to deposit 50 per cent of the fund corpus and the existing temple fund in the nationalised bank that will give the highest interest. The remaining amount will be deposited in two other nationalised banks that will come second and third in the tender process. “Our objective is that we will not keep the money in one nationalised bank only but will be deposited in three to four nationalised banks. It will be implemented from the next financial year,” the then SJTA chief administrator Krishan Kumar had said.
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