Restore status of ‘hereditary archakas,’ urge priests

Hyderabad: Temples’ protection movement convenor and chief priest of Chilkur Balaji temple CS Rangarajan on Thursday urged the government to revive the status of hereditary Archakatvam in the temples like Bhadadri, Vemulawada, Basara, and others.

The Chilkur chief priest Rangarajan met Telangana Deputy Chief Minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka on Thursday regarding the pending problems of traditional archakas of ancient Temples like Bhadradri, Vemulawada, Basara, etc. The temple protection movement has been trying to protect traditional temples and has been striving for restoration of rituals by such hereditary families of Archakas. Telangana government has to notice the fact that Supreme Court had positively responded to the writ petition of MV Soundararajan in 1996 that traditional temples, rural temples would close down if the government insisted on stopping the rituals of hereditary archakas.

Rangarajan recalled that the YS Rajasekhara Reddy government reinstated their services in 2007 through a legislation. Even after 16 years, this amended legislation was not implemented in Telangana.

Whereas in Andhra Pradesh, the Government 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 was 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 past CM, Endowments Minister and officials have not yielded any results. The same amended legislation was not yet implemented. The government has been misled by a few officials that pay scales implementation was the solution to all Archaka problems. Unfortunately it was not so,” said Rangarajan. The Chilkur Balaji priest gifted his LLM Thesis ‘Government Rules on Hindu Temples’ to Bhatti Vikramarka and requested him to do the needful in this regard. The Deputy Chief Minister assured all possible help in the same, he said.