Friday, August 21, 2009

List jewels of Lord, AP court tells TTD

By S A Ishaqui

Hyderabad,Aug. 20: The Andhra Pradesh High Court on Thursday directed the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) to submit a comprehensive inventory of its assets including jewellery within two months.

A division bench comprising Justice G. Raghuram and Justice R. Ranganathan granted seven days to the TTD executive officer to submit an undertaking. The bench was dealing with a petition filed by Mr Bezawada Govinda Reddy, a Congress leader of Nellore district, who alleged that the valuable jewellery was being misappropriated.

Though the TTD’s counsel, Mr S.R. Ashok, volunteered to disclose more if the session was held in the judges’ chambers, the bench turned it down and said it will not hear anything “which is not publicly consumable.”

The court had directed the TTD on August 3 to place before it the inventory of the entire jewellery of the Tirumala temple as well as the other temples under it, but the TTD failed to produce the comprehensive list. Instead, it submitted a book containing the details of some jewels but the bench was not satisfied and asked for a master list of all jewellery, precious and semi precious stones

No comments: