The Sivaji Gali Gopuram of the famous temple to Lord Siva in Srisailam partially collapsed in the early hours of Wednesday. There were no injuries or loss of life as there were no devotees around when the tower crumbled.
The tower, said to have been constructed in the days of Srikrishna Devaraya in the 16th century, had been in a poor condition although the state government did some restoration work on it in 1965. An expert committee team that inspected the state of all historic temple structures in the state after the collapse of the temple tower of the Kalahasti temple in 2010 had recommended reconstruction of the Sivaji Gali Gopuram.
A Narayanareddy, a devotee and a member of the temple’s trust board, had offered to fund the reconstruction to the tune of `4 crore a few months ago. But niether the government nor the temple committee respond. The temple’s officiatinig executive officer A Sagar babu and chairman E Koteswara rao said the structure had weakened due to the three days of rains.
Endowments commissioner Balaramaiah rushed to the spot after coming to know of the incident and pulled up temple officials for being negligent to the state of the structure. He said the expert committee had recommended reconstruction of 25 temple structures around the state but the move was opposed so as to not tamper with heritage sites.
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