Telangana Endowment and Housing Minister A Indrakaran Reddy today said that the archakas of the state's temples would get salaries on par with those of the employees of the endowments department after deciding on the cadre strength including total staff temple-wise.
An exercise was going on on evaluating the merits of the archakas' demands including on hikes of salaries and extensions of the regular rituals of "dhoopa deepa naivedyam" to other temples from August, and orders would be issue soon, he said at a review meeting at the endowments wing at the Dharmika Bhavan in Boggula Kunta.
Saying that complaints had been received that some ineligible people were appointed as archakas, the minister warned the officials of serious action against them if any irregularities were discovered in appointing archakas. The salary hikes would be for those who were already appointed before the formation of Telangana on June 2, 2014, he clarified.
The officials also needed to take steps to extend the regular pujas scheme to other temples from August 1 by scrutinising the 5,289 applications received, by the end of July, the minister said.
Reddy also instructed the officials to prepare proposals for developing famous temples such as those in Basara, Bhadrachalam and Dharmapuri. Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao had allotted funds to develop these temples, and the proposals should be prepared at the earliest, he said. Reconstruction and renovation works at the three temples needed to start in two to three months, he said.