The Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) Board has decided to employ only Hindus in Tirumala. The TTD Board’s newly appointed chairperson BR Naidu said, “The TTD is a Hindu religious institution and the board felt that it should not employ non-Hindus to work in the temple. We shall write to the government to either absorb them in various other departments or offer them a voluntary retirement scheme (VRS).” 

The decision was announced following a meeting of the new Trust Board on November 18, the first Board meeting after the controversy over alleged adulteration of ghee used in Tirupati laddus. 

The decision to remove non-Hindu employees isn’t just a consequence of the hardline Hindutva stance taken by the ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and its allies, Jana Sena Party and BJP, against the previous YSRCP government’s management of TTD. Outrage against non-Hindu TTD employees, even when engaged in non-religious activities such as teaching, driving, or nursing, has been a recurring phenomenon under the previous YSRCP government, as well as the TDP government before that. 

Former TTD Board chairperson and YSRCP leader YV Subba Reddy told TNM that there are only about 40 non-Hindu employees working under TTD. He said that they are employed only outside the temple premises in non-religious work, such as hospitals and schools managed by the Board. TTD employs around 7,000 permanent staff and around 14,000 contract staff, according to The Times of India.  

Can TTD choose to have only Hindu staff?

TTD’s Service Rules, laid down in a Government Order dated October 24, 1989, were amended in 2007 to say that it can recruit only Hindus. “Notwithstanding anything contained in these rules or any other rules now in vogue, appointment to any of the posts in any category in any of the institutions administered or substantially funded by the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams shall be made only from among the persons professing Hindu Religion,” the Service Rules say. 

But a few non-Hindu employees recruited before these rules were in place, mainly Christians, have continued working in TTD.  

The religion of the staff members became a major issue in 2017, when a video of then TTD Welfare Department’s Deputy Executive Officer Sneha Latha visiting a church in her official car surfaced. A group of Hindu priests complained that she was visiting the church every Sunday in the official car belonging to the board. 

Amid pressure from priests and other Hindu groups, the TTD management found that 44 of its employees were non-Hindus, and 39 of them were recruited between 1989-2007. Most of them were employed under the compassionate grounds category, TTD officials had said. 

This list wasn’t just based on their professed religion. The Vigilance Department reportedly conducted door-to-door inquiries, to investigate how the employees were practising their faith privately. 

The TTD management then issued notices to these 44 non-Hindu employees, many of whom worked in posts unrelated to religion, such as drivers, attenders, nurses, sanitation workers etc. The employees then moved the Telangana High Court challenging the service rules. The court in February 2018 stayed the termination of the employees, pulled up the TTD Board for issuing them notices, and raised questions on the constitutional validity of religion-based hiring. 

In 2019, YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, a chief minister of Christian faith, came to power. This was followed by heightened attacks on the TTD by the opposition, with claims that the YSRCP government was enabling religious conversions in Tirumala and across the state. Amid a slew of controversies, such as an advertisement for a Jerusalem pilgrimage on a state transport bus ticket to Tirumala, the opposition started to portray the Jagan government as anti-Hindu.  

Barely two months after Jagan came to power, in August 2019, then chief secretary LV Subrahmanyam said that non-Hindu TTD employees would be removed. He also said that employees recruited as Hindus, who may have converted to other religions, cannot be allowed to continue in the job. The stay order against termination was still in place when he made this statement.

"If people have converted while working here, that is fine. They are free to change their religion and no one will oppose it. However, they can't continue with the job and will not be given an important post because it will hurt the sentiments of Hindus," Subrahmanyam said. 

Newly appointed TTD chairperson Naidu, who also owns the news channel TV5, declared that ensuring only Hindus work at Tirumala would be his main agenda. "Everyone who works at Tirumala should be Hindu. That would be my first effort,” he said. 

But this time, instead of seeking an explanation or terminating them, the Board has asked the government if they can be sent to other government departments or be made to opt for VRS.