Tirupati laddu case: Blame game between NDA and YSRCP leaders over CBI chargesheet

Tirupati: Ruling NDA parties and YSRCP locked horns and engaged in a fierce war of words over the CBI chargesheet, which mentioned the presence of no animal fat in the adulterated ghee supplied to TTD between 2022 and 2024.Former TTD trust board chairman Bhumana Karunakar Reddy conducted a ‘Srinivasa Prasada Ninda Parihara Homam', a ritual to annul the disgrace caused to Lord Venkateswara's laddu prasadam, at his office premises in Tirupati on Friday. The senior YSRCP leader alleged that chief minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu did irreparable damage to the hill shrine and hurt the sentiments of millions of devotees across the world through his "casual and thoughtless statement" about presence of animal fats in the ghee used in the making of the sacred laddus during the previous regime. Calling Naidu's claims "malicious", he demanded an unconditional apology from the CM for misleading and hurting the sentiments of devotees.Hitting back, TTD chairman BR Naidu accused the YSRCP of trying to cover up the ghee adulteration exposed by the CBI in its chargesheet. "The CBI chargesheet makes it clear that 68 lakh kg of synthetic fake ghee worth Rs 250 crore was supplied to TTD during the YSRCP regime. Over 20 crore laddus made using this fake ghee was also distributed to devotees, which is a grave sin. This was a commission-driven scam that directly assaulted the faith of crores of devotees," he alleged.TTD trust board member and BJP spokesperson G Bhanuprakash Reddy said the SIT report clearly mentions that the final product was not ghee at all, and that the supplier did not procure a single drop of milk from any dairy farmer. "In its entire chargesheet, the SIT does not mention the product in question as ‘ghee' anywhere. The findings are a tight slap in the face of the erstwhile trust board that procured a synthetic product instead of pure ghee. Yet, they are now trying to mislead the public by drawing their own inferences from the SIT report," he said.