Puri’s Srimandir Steps Into the League of India's Wealthiest Temples: How New Policy Reforms Built a ₹1,811-Cr Post-Yes Bank Deposit Engine| Special Report

Bhubaneswar: From the Yes Bank controversy that exposed the vulnerability of keeping temple funds with a private bank to a diversified portfolio of fixed deposits with public sector banks, the Sri Jagannath Temple Administration (SJTA) appears to have travelled a remarkably surefooted financial route over the past few years.

On September 2, the SJTA announced its latest fixed-deposit position, putting the nationalised-bank FD investment at Rs1,311.09 crore as on August 31, 2026. When the separate Rs500-crore government corpus fund is added to the temple's capital structure, the broader deposit-backed capital base rises to Rs1,811.09 crore.

The numbers tell a larger story. The temple's FD base has risen from around Rs650 crore in FY2021-22 to Rs1,811.09 crore including the corpus component in August 2026. More importantly, the sharpest acceleration has come during the two years after the BJP government assumed office in Odisha.

The five-year money trail: Where the temple's deposits moved

The first clue to the transformation lies in the five-year trajectory of the temple's financial assets.

Financial Year	Nationalised Bank FDs	Odisha Govt Corpus Fund	Liquid Bank Balances
FY 2021-22	~₹650 cr

None

~₹35.50 cr

FY 2022-23

~₹750 cr

None

~₹39.22 cr

FY 2023-24

~₹950 cr

None

~₹52.00 cr

FY 2024-25

~₹1,320 cr

Under legislative planning

~₹76.30 cr

Aug 31, 2026

₹1,311.09 cr

₹500 cr

₹100.70 cr

At first sight, the apparent moderation in the FD figure between FY2024-25 and August 2026 can be misleading. The reason is that the ₹500-crore state corpus is shown separately in the accounting structure. Thus, the broader capital pool represented by the FD plus corpus rises to ₹1,811.09 crore.

What changed after the BJP government came to power?

The sharp rise cannot be explained by hundi collections alone.

The data points towards a combination of state capital infusion, faster monetisation of temple assets, higher pilgrim activity, digital donations and a more aggressive fixed-deposit strategy.

The single biggest structural intervention was the Rs500-crore government corpus fund. Unlike routine annual grants used to meet operational expenditure, the corpus was designed as structural capital and placed in the temple's Personal Ledger.

The second major change was the administration's approach to the temple's vast land holdings. The government moved to fast-track long-pending revenue cases and enforce a revised Uniform Land Settlement Policy, with the objective of unlocking value from occupied and disputed temple properties.

In July 2026, the Revenue and Disaster Management Department put 11,675 pending revenue cases relating to temple property on a time-bound disposal track. The logic was straightforward: convert stagnant or disputed assets into recoverable financial value and then move the cash into productive financial instruments.

The policy framework also sought to extract upfront premiums and security deposits from commercial leases, including stone quarry operations, rather than waiting for slower royalty flows. These front-loaded receipts could then be placed in interest-bearing instruments.

The third factor was the Shree Mandira Parikrama Project, which altered the visitor economy around the Srimandir. The supplied data attributes a substantial increase in visitor traffic and consequent growth in devotee collections to the improved pilgrim infrastructure.

The fourth was the expansion of digital donation channels through the Samarpan ecosystem, allowing devotees outside Puri and outside Odisha to make digital contributions more easily.

And finally, the SJTA changed the way the accumulated money itself was managed—through competitive bidding among public sector banks and higher institutional deposit yields.

Hundi collections rose – but not enough to explain the deposit surge

The five-year donation data provides an important counterpoint to the FD numbers.

Financial Year	Cash Donation Collections	Other Additions / Context
FY 2021-22	₹17.31 cr	Pandemic recovery; low footfall
FY 2022-23	₹50.80 cr	Heavy institutional/corporate grants
FY 2023-24	₹44.90 cr	~₹16.92 cr strictly from hundi boxes
FY 2024-25	₹55.20 cr	3.44 kg gold; 33.65 kg silver
FY 2025-26	₹58.10 cr (estimated)	Record single-day spikes; global digital payment integration
Five-year cumulative	~₹226.31 cr	58.3 kg cumulative historic gold base

The fixed-deposit trajectory, meanwhile, was:

Financial Horizon	Total FD / Deposit-Backed Capital	Net Addition	Major Driver
FY 2021-22	~₹650 cr	Baseline	Recovery and transfer from private banks
FY 2022-23	~₹750 cr	+₹100 cr	Post-pandemic structural surplus
FY 2023-24	~₹950 cr	+₹200 cr	Interest compounding and land-dispute resolution
FY 2024-25	~₹1,400 cr	+₹450 cr	Four-gate reopening and tourism surge
Aug 31, 2026	₹1,811.09 cr	+₹411.09 cr	₹500-cr government corpus
Five-year increase	+₹1,161.09 cr	178%	Structural + operational factors

This comparison is perhaps the most revealing part of the story.

The temple collected approximately Rs226.31 crore through the five-year donation stream, whereas the broader deposit-backed capital increased by Rs1,161.09 crore. In other words, ordinary devotee contributions alone cannot explain the acceleration in the temple's financial assets.

The analysis estimates that organic devotee inflows represented around 19.4% of the five-year capital growth, while government corpus, asset monetisation and financial restructuring accounted for the overwhelming balance.

That makes the last two years particularly significant: the temple did not merely collect more money – it changed the way existing assets and new receipts were converted into financial capital.

From Yes Bank to PSBs: The safety architecture

The Yes Bank episode was the turning point in the temple's investment philosophy.

More than Rs547 crore had reportedly been temporarily locked in private Yes Bank holdings during the regulatory moratorium. The SJTA subsequently moved the funds out and adopted a diversified nationalised-bank deposit strategy. A major Rs389-crore block transferred from Yes Bank was anchored in SBI.
The new model is deliberately designed to avoid concentration risk.

Under the tendering framework, no single bank is supposed to dominate the temple's entire deposit pool. Active tranches are divided among the highest bidders, with the top bidder taking a maximum of 50%, while the second and third bidders can receive 25% each.

The major public-sector banking destinations identified in the supplied data are:

Bank	Role in Temple Deposit Architecture
State Bank of India	Core/foundation reserve anchor; major funds shifted from Yes Bank
Canara Bank	Short- to medium-term tranches; attracted deposits through competitive yields
Punjab National Bank	Rolling one-year fixed deposits
Bank of Baroda	Secondary diversification anchor
Union Bank of India	Additional nationalised-bank deposit platform
UCO Bank	Local institutional banking presence
Indian Bank	Additional public-sector banking destination

Canara Bank, for instance, secured tranches by offering institutional yields as high as 7.8% in the supplied data, while Bank of Baroda deposits were placed at yields averaging around 7.55% during tender reviews. The overall strategy has been to seek competitive institutional rates while keeping the money spread across public-sector banks.

The result is a two-layer financial strategy: protect the principal through diversification, and grow the principal through competitive interest rates and rollover of earnings.

Puri versus India's other big temples

Puri's deposit engine is still much smaller than India's biggest temple financial institution, Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams. But the rate of expansion is what makes the Srimandir story noteworthy.

Temple / Trust	FY 2021-22	FY 2022-23	FY 2023-24	FY 2024-25	2026 Status
Puri Srimandir (SJTA)	~₹650 cr	~₹750 cr	~₹950 cr	~₹1,400 cr	₹1,811.09 cr
Tirupati Balaji (TTD)	~₹14,000 cr	~₹15,500 cr	₹18,817 cr	~₹19,200 cr	₹20,000+ cr
Mata Vaishno Devi	~₹1,100 cr	~₹1,300 cr	~₹1,500 cr	~₹1,750 cr	₹2,000+ cr
Kashi Vishwanath Dham	~₹150 cr	~₹250 cr	~₹400 cr	~₹550 cr	₹650+ cr
Somnath Trust	~₹220 cr	~₹280 cr	~₹310 cr	~₹350 cr	₹390+ cr
Rameswaram	~₹90 cr	~₹110 cr	~₹140 cr	~₹160 cr	₹190+ cr
Dwarkadhish Devsthan Samiti	~₹80 cr	~₹95 cr	~₹115 cr	~₹130 cr	₹150+ cr

Puri is therefore nowhere near Tirupati in absolute financial scale. But the transformation of the Srimandir's deposit architecture is striking for another reason.

It has moved from a period of private-bank exposure and relatively modest deposit accumulation to a model built around public-sector-bank diversification, competitive interest rates, state-backed corpus capital, asset monetisation and stronger pilgrim-linked cash flows.

The numbers suggest that the new government's first two years did not simply make the Jagannath Temple richer through higher offerings. They changed the financial plumbing through which the temple's wealth is collected, converted, protected and compounded.

And that may be the more consequential story behind the Rs1,811-crore figure.

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