Hyderabad, August 05: The Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) Board will have to answer a lot of searching questions before it submits its report to the Andhra Pradesh High Court in about three weeks on the inventory of jewellery belonging to Lord Venkateswara on the Tirumala Hills.
The High Court’s directive to the TTD Board to make an inventory of all properties, including jewellery of all temples under its purview, has come at a time when serious apprehensions are being expressed in various quarters over the safety and security of the highly valuable ornaments.
The Express is in possession of a report placed before the Board in 2008 in which a proposal was made to write off “shortages” in gold and silver jewellery as well as loss of stones. But, the Board did not approve the same.
The “shortages” mentioned in the report pertain to the years 2005-06 and 2006-07 and the reason cited was “wear and tear” because of frequent usage. But what is surprising in the entire report is that the value of the “missing items” or “shortages” have been put at as low as Rs 100 and in some cases even less. For example, the report cites three stones as missing from a ‘Rangoon diamond necklace’ and their value has been fixed at Rs 30. Another entry says four white stones are missing from a ‘gold pathakam’ and their value has been estimated to be Rs 20.
According to the note forwarded by the inventory section for the Board’s approval, “loss of gold due to wear and tear” is Rs 17,595 for 2005-06 and Rs 33,055 for the following year. Likewise, the loss in regard to stones has been estimated at Rs 23,850 for 2005-06 and Rs 29,290 for the subsequent year. But the appendix to the note in which the list of missing items/shortages has been detailed runs into quite a few pages.
Doubts about the safety of the Lord’s jewellery have been raised long ago and they have only been reinforced after the scam surrounding the misappropriation of gold dollars surfaced some years ago. Subsequently, the TTD conducted a vigilance inquiry into the episode and the Endowments Department has recently issued notices to more than a dozen temple staff, past and present.
Significantly, a senior TTD official, B V Ramana Kumar, who was head of the vigilance wing and conducted the probe into the dollars case, has himself voiced serious concerns over the manner in which annual appraisal of the jewellery is being done and advised the Board to put in place a foolproof mechanism.
–Agencies–