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BHUBANESWAR, INDIA, April 18, 2005: In an effort to overcome its severe financial crunch, Orissa’s famous Jagannath Temple is planning to sell off all plots of land it owns in this and other states. The 12th-century temple at Puri owns about 700 acres of land in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. In Orissa alone, its land holdings total around 5,400 acres. The administration is having problems managing all the plots, portions of which have been encroached upon by people living nearby, thus eating into the temple’s earnings, temple administrator Suresh Kumar Mohapatra said. An appointee of the state government will visit the various sites to locate encroachers. He will place before them the option to buy the land. If they decline, steps will be taken to sell it to a third party, Mohapatra said. The money from the sale of the land will be deposited in a bank to yield regular interests. The shrine earns about US$1,258,000 per year: US$228,000 from devotees, US$455,000 from government funds and US$572,000 from the lease of mining areas in its lands. With the sale of its land, the temple administration is hoping to realize about US$23 million, the interests of which would be sufficient to meet the temple’s daily expenses and salary requirements for its employees.

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