u/harpeshwar

Posting this here because the bigger subreddits get hijacked by both sides. I just want to put the numbers out there and let people argue with the data, not with me.

The AP Endowments Department looks after around 30,000+ temples in the state. Here's what you can actually find from official records between 2019 and 2024:

Pay raises for priests and temple staff (changed in May 2021)

• Category-1 archakas: monthly pay went from ₹10,000 to ₹15,625

• Category-2 archakas: monthly pay went from ₹5,000 to ₹10,000

• Imams: ₹5,000 to ₹10,000

• Pastors: ₹5,000 monthly pay introduced

One thing worth noticing: this was the same policy applied across all faiths. The pastor pay got attacked as "Christian appeasement," but the same order also raised priest pay. The fact that people only got angry about one part tells you something about how the story is being built.

Major temple work and projects funded

• Sri Padmavathi Ammavari temple, Tiruchanur: renovation work

• Srisailam temple: corridor and infrastructure work

• Kanaka Durga temple, Vijayawada: partial work

• Annavaram Satyanarayana Swamy temple: facilities upgrade

• Simhachalam: restoration work

• Ramateertham temple: ₹3 crore given for development after the 2020 vandalism, plus new idols sent through TTD

Programs run during his time as CM

• Dhoopa Deepa Naivedyam scheme: pay for archakas and temple staff at small temples that can't support themselves

• TTD budget grew from ₹3,116 crore (2019-20) to ₹5,142 crore (2024-25), about a 65% jump

What the critics get right

• The response to Antarvedi (Sept 2020) and Ramateertham (Dec 2020) was politically slow, even though the police did act in the end

• Some controversies around temple lands did happen in different districts

• Schemes didn't get rolled out the same way across all districts

I'm not posting this to say everything was perfect. It wasn't. I'm posting it because the public conversation has zero of this data on one side and zero acknowledgement of failures on the other. Both sides have already made up their minds.

If you have official sources that show different numbers, please drop them. I'd rather fix this post than leave wrong figures up.