Puri: The Gajapati, Dibyasingh Deb, has approved the Jagannath temple’s annual budget of Rs 102 crore for 2019-20 at a meeting of the Temple Managing Committee here on Friday.
Briefing mediapersons after the meeting, chief administrator of the Shree Jagannath Temple Administration (SJTA), Pradipta Mahapatra, said the expenditure for the temple is pegged at Rs 78 crore while the budget allocation for this year’s Rath Yatra is Rs 6 crore. The temple managing committee’s proposal to enhance the Gajapati’s annual honorarium from Rs 6 lakh to Rs 12 lakh was also approved at the meeting.
Stating that the annual temple donation received by SJTA was Rs 4 crore, Mahapatra said the meeting decided to make efforts to increase the volume of donation.
The chief administrator said Rs 5 crore was earmarked in the budget for the welfare of servitors. The meeting decided to request the state government to make provision of salary for the temple employees. “The annual expenditure of the temple towards servitors and employees is Rs Rs 32 crore and Rs 28 crore respectively,” he said.
He also said efforts are on to increase the temple’s corpus fund from Rs 650 crore to Rs 700 crore.
Among others, Puri collector Jyoti Prakash Das, superintendent of police Umashankar Das, members of the temple managing committee and senior servitors attended the meeting.
