Vrindavan, 2016.11.24 (TNN): Over 50% of Rs 1 crore, taken out from donation boxes at Vrindavan’s historic Banke Bihari temple in the last five days, are demonetised Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes. Since nine donation boxes are yet to be opened, this amount of Rs 52.9 lakh is the banned currency is likely to mount further.
Talking to TOI, Munish Sharma, temple manager, 26 notes of the newly-released Rs 2,000 currency were also taken out from the boxes. Giving the breakup, he said, “So far, 1,705 notes of demonetised Rs 1,000 and 7,179 of Rs 500 have also been received. The amount has been deposited in banks.”
“Over 200 grams of gold and over 500 grams of silver-coated items and foreign currency have also been taken out. Since these donation boxes were opened last time in the first week of September, it would be difficult to tell if the donation of the banned notes increased after demonetisation or not,” he added.
After the demonetisation of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes, the government had ordered temples across the nation to take each day’s earnings and deposit in the bank to tide over the cash crunch of small denomination notes.
There are over 7,000 temples in Mathura and Vrindavan alone and all of them started depositing their donations to the banks. According to officials, Banke Bihari temple receives close to Rs 1.5 crore in donations every month.
The temple has 17 donation boxes and it takes at least 10 days to count the money.
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