Devotee donates Rs.1.1 crore to Tirumala temple

An entrepreneur hailing from Visakhapatnam on Thursday donated Rs.1.1 crore to the Lord Venkateswara shrine at Tirumala here, a temple official said.

The devotee, Yarlagada Surya Rao, Managing Director of Devi Fisheries Limited in Visakhapatnam, after offering prayers, handed over a demand draft for the amount to AV Dharma Reddy, Special Officer of Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams that administers the temple, the official said.

The devotee requested the TTD to utilize the fund for the temple-run pilgrims free meal trust, Sri Venkateswara Annadaanam Trust, which has been feeding about one lakh pilgrims here daily by using the interest on the over Rs 1,000-crore corpus contributed by devotees since 1985, he said.

For the same cause, last week, Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) made an offering of Rs.1.11 crore to the shrine, the official said.