India's Top Richest Temples

Padmanabhaswamy Temple:

Recently treasures worth $20bn were found in Padmanabhaswamy temple, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. Six vaults piled with gold and jewels have been discovered in the temple that belonged to Travancore royalty. There were sacks of diamonds and tonnes of gold coins and jewellery that were lying untouched for hundreds of years. This makes the temple the richest in India. Here’s a list of the top five richest temples in India.

Tirumala Tirupati Venkateswara Temple: 

The Tirupati temple at Andhra Pradesh is now the second richest temple in India. It gets visits from over 60,000 devotees every day.  Actor Amitabh Bachchan, a devotee of Tirupati’s Venkateswara deity, has made several generous donations to the temple including a whopping Rs 51 lakh. The temple gets up to Rs 650 crore in donations every year. The gold on the deity itself is 1000 kg!

Saibaba Temple, Shirdi: 

Shrine to Saibaba, the Shirdi temple is the third richest in the nation.  It sees millions of devotees from different religions and castes everyday. The temple has gold and silver jewellery worth approximately Rs 32 crore and silver coins worth more than Rs 6 lakh. The temple gets donations worth Rs 350 crore every year.

Siddhivinayak, Mumbai: 

This is one temple frequented by commoners and celebrities alike including the Bachchans, Shilpa Shetty and Deepika Padukone. The income of this temple including donations goes upto Rs 48 crore every year. The dome over Ganesha is coated in 3.7 kilos of gold that was donated by a Kolkata-based businessman.

Harmandir Sahib or the Golden temple, Punjab: 

The holiest shrine in the Sikh religion has its walls decorated with wooden panels and elaborate gold and silver work. The palanquin that bears the Adi Granth is set with precious stones and has a golden canopy supported by silver poles. This holy place gets as many as 40,000 visitors a day.

Vaishno Devi, Kashmir: 

This temple is one of the oldest in the country. It gets more than 4.5 million visitors every year and an income of Rs 500 crore annually.