Restore status of hereditary archakas, urges Chilkur Temple Chief Priest Rangarajan

In memorandum submitted to the Deputy Chief Minister, Rangarajan said as part of its effort to revive hereditary archakatvam in ancient temples, the TPM has been trying to protect traditional temples and has been striving for restoration of rituals by such hereditary families of archakas.

He said the Telangana government must notice the fact that the Supreme Court had positively responded to the writ petition of Dr M V Soundararajan in 1996 that traditional temples, rural temples would close down if the Government insisted on stopping the rituals of hereditary archakas.

The YS Rajasekhara Reddy government in united Andhra Pradesh reinstated their services in 2007 through legislation. Even after 16 years, this amended legislation was not implemented in Telangana. Whereas in Andhra Pradesh, the government has issued GO Ms 439 in 2019 and initiated succession proceedings for thousands of archaka families.

In Telangana, the recent wrong move by the officials of the Endowments Administration to transfer hereditary archakas is an offshoot to the non- implementation of the 2007 Amended Legislation in which the hereditary archakas cannot be transferred. In the last 10 years post-Bifurcation, innumerable representations to the previous Chief Minister, Endowments Minister and Officials have not yielded any results.

The government has been misled by a few officials that pay scales implementation is the solution to all archaka problems but unfortunately it was not so. The Chief Priest gifted his LLM thesis “Government Rules Hindu Temples” to Bhatti Vikramarka and requested him to do the needful in this regard.