Tirupati laddus row: Seven questions that need answers

The controversy over ingredients such as 'beef tallow' and 'lard' instead of ghee in laddu prasadam offered at Andhra Pradesh's famed Tirumala Venkateswara (Tirupati) temple has raised hackles, certainly. However, it has also raised certain questions.

Yes, chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu’s accusations of his predecessor regime's alleged collusion in allowing 'impure' ingredients in the Tirupati prasadam came with a purported lab report — three months after Naidu took office. His claims surfaced on 18 September, pointing fingers at the previous Jagan Mohan Reddy-led YSRCP government for allegedly 'contaminating' the highly in-demand prasadam.

Samples of this prasadam were sent all the way off to a livestock lab in BJP-ruled Gujarat because, apparently, similar labs could not be found closer to home. The samples were received on 9 July, and the report, supposedly mentioning lard, beef tallow, and fish oil, was dated 16 July.

Convenient that this revelation only emerged in September, with Assembly elections due in three states and Union Territories — Jammu & Kashmir, Maharashtra and Haryana — this month and next.

Strangely enough, there has been no official confirmation from either the Andhra Pradesh government or the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) about these shocking findings. Amidst all the noise about purity and impurity, let’s consider seven crucial questions:

1) Why send samples to a Gujarat lab when TTD claims that it has had a swanky laboratory for testing prasadam since 2016?

2) Is TTD’s lab even operational and if not, why? And where are the reports if any of previous tests of the laddus' quality?

3) Why was a 16 July report suddenly paraded around in September, sans any government notification?

4) A committee of dairy experts was formed comprising Dr Mahadevan, Dr B. Surendranath, Dr Vijaya Bhaskar Reddy and Professor Swarna Lathalu in July, to test the quality of ghee used in the prasadam. Where is the report from this committee?

5) If the Karnataka Milk Federation (KMF), producer of Nandini ghee, opted out of a tender to supply ghee to TTD in 2023 because it couldn’t match the lower prices offered by others, were those other companies simply cutting corners on quality?

6) TTD executive officer J. Shyamala Rao said the board was in the process of blacklisting the contractor who supplied 'adulterated' ghee. But why not announce the name of the contractor who supplied the ghee?

7) After Naidu's return to power, the entire TTD governing body, including chairman Bhumana Karunakar Reddy, resigned. Who are the replacements, and why is their silence so deafening? Incidentally, the website hasn’t seen an update since the elections.

Without concrete answers to any of these questions, are these allegations just part of the political vendetta that is the norm in Andhra Pradesh politics so as to ensure Jagan Mohan Reddy goes behind bars for a few months, just as Reddy had thrown Naidu behind bars before elections last year?