Bhubaneswar: The Srimandir authorities in Puri are now in a quandary with the Reserve Bank of India sitting for months together over their plea that a solution be provided to the tangle of more than Rs 18 lakh worth of demonetised currency having piled up in their donation boxes.
Srimandir deputy administrator (finance) Kishore Chandra Pradhan said, “After demonetisation, the trend of dropping old notes in the temple hundi (donation box) continued. The devotees dropped banned notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 into the donation box. Now the banned notes worth Rs 18.84 lakhs is lying in the donation box.”
On March 18, four months after the demonetisation, the temple administration had written to RBI, Bhubaneswar in this regard. However, they did not get any response from the apex bank.
“Again, on June 1 we had written to RBI, Mumbai. But we are yet to get any response from them too. While we await the response of the RBI, devotees continued to drop the banned currencies in the donation box,” Pradhan added.
Wednesday marked the anniversary of demonetisation that took place on November 8 last year, sending into a tizzy the economy and the employment scenario and rendering millions of people jobless.
Unable to dump their old currency notes, devotees are dropping the demonetised notes in donation boxes at the Srimandir in Puri and Lingaraj temple in Bhubaneswar. The deadline for exchange of demonetised notes expired December 30 last year.
Now, the temple trustees are worried what to do with the banned denominations. The temple receives an average of Rs 3-4 lakhs in donations every day.
Speaking on the issue, deputy chief administrator of Srimandir and collector Arvind Agarwal said, “We have already written so many letters to the RBI as to how the notes can be exchanged. But, unfortunately, we did not get any response. Now, the value of the old notes is just like plain paper. If the Centre takes a lenient view on the issue, the money would immensely help in the development of Srimandir.”
Secretary of Pujapanda Niyog Madhav Chandra Pujapanda Samant said, “The temple administration is sitting on a giant pile of demonetised cash. If the Centre wants, it can help Srimandir come out of the critical situation. The coins of the donation box have also become another headache for the temple administration. While nobody is agreeing to take them, coins worth Rs 40 lakh of Srimandir have been kept in a bank.”
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