Simhachalam, Annavaram laddu quality too poor

Hyderabad : It is not just Tirumala temple where the quality of laddu prasadam had gone down. Even quality of laddus in Simhachalam Sri Narasimha Swamy temple and Annavaram Sri Satyanarayana Swamy temple had deteriorated during the YSRCP regime. TDP MLA Ganta Srinivas Rao, who went on a surprise visit to Simhachalam Sri Narsimhaswamy temple and Varupla Satya Prabha MLA Prattipadu who inspected the prasdam of Annavaram, were surprised to see that the concept of ‘reverse tendering’ was followed in the purchase of ghee in these temples and what was more shocking was that no quality tests were done. Speaking to the media Ganta said the quality of laddu in Simhachalam temple was not up to the mark.

He said till 2021-22 Vijaya Visakha Dairy was supplying ghee for Rs 490 per kg but the YSRCP government cancelled the contract in 2022-23 and gave it to a private company in Uttar Pradesh called Premier Agro Tech Ltd which supplied ghee for Rs 385 per kg.

The temple authorities also entered into contract with another private seller Rythu dairy in East Godavari district which also supplied ghee at the same rate. The officials told Ganta that no lab tests of the ghee were done and they had no reply when asked why it was not done.

Meanwhile, the priests in the temple informed Ganta that they could not complain to anyone as no one listened to them. They said it was not possible to get pure ghee at cheaper rates. For a yagam they performed recently, they purchased cow ghee for Rs 1400 per kg from Rajasthan.

Meanwhile, the Anand-based Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF) AMUL filed an FIR with Ahmedabad cyber crime police against seven users of social media platform 'X' for allegedly spreading misinformation that the "low quality" ghee used for making laddus at the Tirupati temple belonged to the 'Amul' brand. 'Amul', has denied having supplied ghee (clarified butter) to the Tirumala-Tirupati Devasthanams.