Lakhs (hundreds of thousands) of rupees donated at the Shirdi Saibaba temple are in coins. Now, the Shri Saibaba Sansthan Trust (SSST) is faced with a serious problem of plenty as even the banks are struggling to accommodate the coins.
The trust has accounts in 13 branches of different state-owned banks. A dozen of them are in the temple town alone, and one is in Nashik. At present, all these banks collectively hold about Rs 11 crore of SSST money in the form of coins alone.
Four state-owned banks in Shirdi have now stopped taking the coins because of space crunch, said Rahul Jadhav, the chief executive officer of the trust. “Officials of these four banks said they have no space to keep the coins they get every day. This is a big problem for the trust,” Jadhav said.
The trust is in the process of writing directly to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) seeking its intervention. Simultaneously, we have decided to approach banks in other parts of Ahmednagar district as well as the state to help us. We will open accounts of the trust in such banks so that the coins can be deposited there,” added Jadhav.
The monthly collection in form of coins – from 50 paise to Rs 10 denomination – is close to Rs 28 lakh. Each bank, where the trust has an account, sends its personnel to the temple by rotation every month to collect donations and deposits.
In 2019, the banks had raised the issue with the SSST, saying that bags of coins are eating into the space at bank branches. At that time, the trust had offered the banks rooms within the temple premises to store the coins. However, the banks had turned down the offer saying rules did not permit such an arrangement.
“The temple’s coin problem has resurfaced with the Covid pandemic loosening its grip. The temple’s average daily footfall is over 50,000, and coins have started accumulating. Apart from the four banks, which have stopped the collection of coins, some of the remaining banks also have requested us to resolve this problem as they too are facing a space crunch,” said the SSST officials.
A senior functionary of a public sector bank in Shirdi told TOI that the trust needs to find a solution fast. “My branch has coins amounting to about Rs 1.6 crore. Another bank in Shirdi has coins worth Rs 3 crore. In one of the banks, the coin bags are kept outside the strongroom since the room is completely stacked with coin bags,” said the bank official.