The Justice M. Jagannadha Rao Commission of inquiry, which went into the shortage of 300 gold dollars from a sales counter at Lord Venkateswara's temple at Tirumala in 2006, has absolved three officers of the charge of pilferage.
They were P. Seshadri, clerk at Bokkasam (a large room inside the Srivari temple where the dollars from the Mint in Mumbai arrived); Vasudevan, peishkar, and R. Prabhakara Reddy, Deputy Executive Officer (temples). The commission, however, did not enquire into the role of K. Venkatachalapati, assistant/shroff at the sales counter of the Srivari temple, since he is facing charges in a criminal court.
“Failure of human factor”
The report of the commission, which was tabled in the Assembly on Thursday along with the action taken report (ATR) of the State government, said there appeared to be a “failure of the human factor” in the whole episode. There was no evidence of involvement in, conspiracy by or connivance on the part of officers or employees of the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) in the shortage of 300 gold dollars of 5 grams each from the sales counter.
It said the shortage occurred for want of verification of the quantity at the sales counter at regular intervals. The shortage could have been discovered much earlier had there been periodical verification to see if the stock of dollars available at the counter was the same as the stock mentioned in the stock register.
The report, however, noted the allegation of the TTD in the criminal case against Mr. Venkatachalapati that he had misappropriated 300 gold dollars.
The commission did not feel that the responsibility for lack of proper verification of stock could be fixed on all officers sweepingly. It would be necessary to examine the stock register, cash-chitta, receipts and challan books of the sales counter and determine what amount of cash was deposited with the State Bank of India, Tirumala, from 2001 to August, 2006, to find out how many dollars were not accounted for at the sales counter at any given point of time and who were the immediate supervising officers.
Existing system safe
The ATR said the existing system of receiving currency at Srivari temple was safe and no action was required on the recommendation of the commission, which had also endorsed that the administration of the temple had fairly good systems and checks.
