Vijayawada: The Andhra Pradesh government has informed the High Court that it plans to amend the AP Charitable and Hindu Religious Institutions and Endowments Act 1987 to allow the nomination of 52 special invitees to the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam Trust Board.
A division bench headed by Chief Justice Prashant Mishra and Justice Ninala Jayasurya heard a petition on Friday filed by Telugu Desam leader from Kalyandurg, Uma Maheswara, with a plea to suspend the recent GOs nominating so many special invitees to the board. He argued that it violated the provisions of the act.
Petitioner’s counsel Yamalanjula Balaji argued that section 98 of the act permitted the state government to appoint only 29 members to the board.
He contended that since each member of the board has to be given a staff of 10 employees, this larger number of special invitees would cause more financial burden on the board. This would also add to the trouble of the common devotees to take darshan of the load during board meetings as the members/special invitees would get preference for darshan.
Counsel sought to know the need for having such a jumbo-sized board to run the TTD as neither the central cabinet nor the AP cabinet was having such a big number of ministers to administer the country/ AP.
Counsel for TTD and state government DVSS Prasad submitted to the court that the state government was contemplating to amend the act to accommodate 52 special invitees to the trust board and sought four weeks’ time to file the counter affidavit.
The court posted the next hearing after two weeks. Meanwhile, Tirupati MLA Karunakar Reddy filed an implead petition.
