Row over supply of other religious material along with Sapthagiri: TTD denies any role

Tirupati: The distribution of other religious booklets inserted in the TTD official monthly magazine Sapthagiri among some devotees from Guntur caused ripples in the TTD.

Reacting to these reports, TTD authorities on Monday denied the role of their staff in the new controversy. They said there was no scope for inserting any other print material in Sapthagiri magazine dispatched from Tirupati by book post to the subscribers across the country, officials said.

Sapthagiri incharge Chief Editor Rajagopalan stated that there was no scope for packing any print material other than Sapthagiri in the office. After the printing of the magazine, the staff hand over the copies of Sapthagiri and Bala Sapthagiri and the envelops (separately) to the postal staff who arrange for placing the magazine in the envelop and send the parcels in their mail van to the head post office from where the devotional monthly is dispatched by post to the subscribers.

The TTD has a pre-mailing facility under which the Postal department accepts the delivery of the magazine with no prepayment of postal charges for the book post of Sapthagiri magazine published in six languages, including Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, English, Hindi and Sanskrit.

They said it needs to be seen if any mischief had been played by someone in Guntur. It seems to be a purely local issue as so far no such complaints from any other part of the state had been received. The TTD had taken this seriously and will probe the issue, he said.

The circulation of Sapthagiri is about one lakh mostly in the two Telugu states.