It has been nearly two weeks since the Telugu Desam Party-led coalition government headed by chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu decided to appoint another independent inquiry committee to dig further into the adulteration of ghee supplied to the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams for making of famed Tirupati laddu.
The decision was taken at the state cabinet meeting chaired by on February 3. It was decided to constitute a high-level inquiry committee to identify the real culprits behind the adulteration of ghee supplied to the TTD during the previous YSR Congress party regime.
The inquiry committee was expected to probe the role of officials and non-officials responsible for the ghee adulteration and examine whether there were any additional administrative lapses, apart from those pointed out by the Central Bureau of Investigation-led special investigation team (SIT) in its final charge-sheet submitted to the court.
A couple of days later, Naidu convened a meeting of his alliance partner, where he announced formation of a one-man committee to conduct a comprehensive examination of the SIT report.
“The one-man panel will identify lapses, fix responsibility on the officials responsible for the supply of adulterated ghee to the TTD and recommend a follow-up action. Once the committee submits its study report, the government will initiate appropriate action in accordance with its findings,” Naidu told reporters.
Everybody expected that the government order (GO) on the formation of one-man committee within hours of the meeting. But till date, there has been no such move from the Naidu government.
There has been complete silence from the government side on further probe into the matter and the leaders of the ruling party, too, have stopped talking about the ghee adulteration issue for now.
This has led to the talk whether the chief minister has backtracked on the formation of the one-man committee fearing that it might expose the lapses in his own administration or whether he was under pressure from the Centre to go slow on the probe.
There were reports that the north-based dairies involved in the Tirumala ghee scam have the backing of the big leaders in Delhi and hence, any further investigation might expose these leaders as well.
Whatever may be the reasons, there has been no information from the government on the one-man panel on Tirumala ghee adulteration issue till date.
Maybe, Naidu is planning to make the announcement after discussing the subject in the state assembly!