Hyderabad: The priests and descendants of the presiding deities at Medaram Sammakka-Saralamma temple held a dharna in front of the temple on Wednesday, May 29 demanding the Telangana government to either change the name of “Dharmika Bhavan” allotted to them in 1993 to “Medaram Dharmika Bhavan,” or to hand-over the building to them by vacating the Vedic school being run on its premises.
They also demanded bringing the building under the control of Medaram temple’s executive officer.
The protesting priests have cautioned that if their demand is not met, they will lock down the Medaram temple from June 5 to 9.
The priests claim that the then fisheries minister allotted 1,014 square yards of land for the construction of a building with guest houses for the priests along with a Hundi counting area and other facilities.
In the recent times, the Warangal Bhadrakali temple head priest and the executive officer have lobbied with the endowments department and got the ground floor, second and fourth floors of the five-storey building to run their Vedic school.
“We have met the local minister Seethakka, who discussed the issue with the commissioner of the endowments department. She told us that the Vedic school was being run only for six months till they built the school elsewhere. But the minister’s statements and what’s happening on the ground are totally different. The head priest of the Bhadrakali temple asked us to vacate our office from the building,” said one of the protesting priests at Medaram.
The priests further stated that they also spoke with the commissioner of the endowments department, who asked them to bring the proceedings and other documents related to the property, and only after reviewing the documents he could take a decision on it.
The priests said that they were not convinced with the assurance of the commissioner, and hoped Seethakka would take the issue to the notice of chief minister A Revanth Reddy and get it resolved.
