The inventorying of vault A — a subterranean structure — at the Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple here, would begin by the end of next week.
This was decided at a meeting on Friday of the Supreme Court committee on the temple. Sources in the committee said here that the inventorying of this vault may take up to six months.
“This vault contains artefacts such as ‘sarappoli mala’, coins, crowns and other jewellery. It cannot be inventoried at the same speed that the others were,” one official associated with the inventorying said.
The articles in vault A would be inventoried in exactly the same manner as those in the other vaults. However, there needs to be a slight modification in the security procedure. “We have to take the articles out of the underground chamber and take them to the workstations. The security measures for this process will be devised over the next couple of days,” the official said.
Thorough check
Moreover, the committee is expected to take a final call on the items to be inventoried first, only after a thorough examination of the boxes in which these jewels and chains are kept.
It was also decided that the committee would submit an interim report on its work to the Supreme Court on August 6. The next hearing of the temple case is scheduled at the apex court on August 8.
The inventorying of vaults C and D is all but over. Only four to five articles in vault D remain to be documented. Vaults E and F — which contain utensils and articles that are used for daily pujas and prayers — would be inventoried at a time that is convenient for the temple priests, the ‘Nambis.’
As has already been specified by the Apex Court, the opening of vault B — which had becoming controversial right from the time the vaults were opened for the first time by the Ananda Bose Committee — would be considered only after substantial progress has been made in documenting the contents of all the other vaults.
Strengthening vault C
The committee which recently inspected vault C preparatory to strengthening it for long-term storage of the inventoried contents of the temple vaults is yet to submit its final report. The government has already issued orders stipulating that the strengthening work be done under the supervision of the inspection committee itself, sources in the committee said here.
Sources in the Supreme Court committee said here that though the study recently done by the Centre for Earth Science Studies to detect underground tunnels leading to the temple was not part of the apex court’s mandate, any developments on this front would be immediately reported to the court.
