What most news reports did not tell you about the 'missing gold' in Padmanabha Swamy temple

What most news reports did not tell you about the 'missing gold' in Padmanabha Swamy temple
What most news reports did not tell you about the 'missing gold' in Padmanabha Swamy temple
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Haritha John| The News Minute| February 14, 2014| 10.30 pm IST

Former chief government auditor Vinod Rai in his audit report that he submitted to the Supreme Court on Friday mentioned that 266 kg of gold from Kerala’s Shree Padmanabhaswamy temple has gone missing during the purification process.

Media reports said that according to the audit report, 893.44 kg gold was taken out and given to the contractor for purification, but only 627.37 kg pure gold was returned.

Though the news has shocked many, what is important to note is that the disappearance of the gold is not something which happened recently.

In fact the gold was taken out on a total of 82 occasions between 1990 to 2001, and this was not mentioned in most news reports.

Rai has also pointed that the temple’s mysterious cellar B, one of the six cellars which has temple gold and other valuables, had been opened 7 times earlier.

Historian and the author of a book on history of Shree Padmanabhaswamy temple, Malayankeezhu Gopalakrishnan says that many misdeeds happened during those 11 years.

“As per the law, purification should be done in the centres under the Reserve Bank of India but here they had approached some private contractors for purification,” he alleged.

The report also pointed out that 24-carat gold rakes weighing 14.6 kg and 1.9 kg of pure gold with an approximate value of Rs 4.8 crore was missing after it was handed over to a contractor more than four years ago.

“It is sure that many times gold and silver were withdrawn from the temple cellars for purification,” Gopalakrishnan said.

The audit report also criticized the Travancore Royal family for not acting responsible. “It is not sure that who has taken the gold for purification, whether it was royal family or the government officers, there is a lot of confusion over this issue,” the historian said.

Vinod Rai’s report also mentioned that some ornaments were also missing from the temple.

Background

A case between Kerala government and Travancore Royal family Thiruvananthapuram is still going on in Supreme Court over who is the authority responsible for the Shree Padmanabhaswamy temple and its assets.

Vinod Rai was asked by the Supreme Court last year to conduct an audit of the temple's books and accounts following the court’s amicus curiae Gopal Subramaniam’s report on the temple.

Subramaniam’s report had also criticized royal family’s role. 

It was in July 2011 that an apex court committee checked the six temple cellars with valuable assets and found that there were treasures estimated to be valued at more than Rs 100,000 crore. Since then, armed security guards besides state of the art security equipment has been deployed for the safety of this treasure.

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