Puri: The Jagannath temple here received an offering of foreign currency notes as donations this week. This was noticed Wednesday while the collections from Hundis (donation boxes) installed inside the temple premises were being counted.
There were 20 Australian dollar notes and 26 American dollar notes, apart from Rs 2,69,912 cash, 18.440gram of gold and 26.920gram of silver as donations Wednesday.
Temple information officer Sudeep Chatterjee said foreign currency found from hundis is not a new happening. Devotees coming to the temple drop currency, gold, silver etc into the boxes. Every evening, the collected money and gold and silver ornaments are counted at the branch office in the premises of the temple. The temple administration makes the total amount of money received public.
Notably, the SJTA used to display information related to the amount received in the Hundis, on a notice board at regular intervals. But, no information is provided about amount of gold and silver received.
Recently, the temple authorities decided to count money collected from the Hundi under CCTV camera surveillance after complaints of cash and other valuables theft during the counting. The counting process is also displayed live on the LED screen installed at the temple.
