Sabarimala ‘Loses its Glitter’

The Kerala Assembly has been paralysed for the last couple of days. The High Court has ordered the setting up of a Special Investigating Team (SIT) under an Additional Director General of Police (ADGP). The Opposition parties have unleashed a spree of protests. All in the wake of the reports on the ‘missing gold’ from the revered Sabarimala temple. Ironically, all this is happening when the main Sabarimala pilgrimage season is less than two months away.

The temple has been thrown into the eye of a storm over the missing gold used for gold-plating (cladding) of the idols of the ‘dwarpalika’ (gatekeepers) on either side of the sanctum sanctorum. In 1998, fugitive Vijay Mallya, currently residing in the U.K., donated gold for coating the idols of the gatekeepers, their pedestals, and the interior of the sanctum sanctorum of the temple.

Two decades later, when the gold-plated panels of the idols needed a makeover, they were handed over to a ‘sponsor’, Unnikrishnan Potty, who was supposed to get the work done in Chennai. According to reports, a ‘mahazar’ (record) prepared by the temple officials on July 19, 2019, shows that Potty was handed over gold-coated panels weighing 25.4 kg and pedestals weighing 17.4 kg, making the total weight 42.8 kg.  But, when Potty returned the idols with the gold coating and pedestals, on completion of the repair works in Chennai, their weight was reported to be 38.25 kg, showing a loss of 4.5 kg. Going by the present price of gold, the loss runs into crores.

It is intriguing that the same Potty, reportedly a priest-turned-businessman, came forward this year also, as the ‘sponsor’ for make-over work of the panels done. From here onwards, several versions of the controversy are floating in the media. According to one version, Potty has told the police that when the claddings/panels were handed over to him in 2019, he was given copper panels, and not gold-coated ones as reported in the media. He further mentioned to the investigators that he managed to collect money from various quarters and got the panels gold-coated. Hence, according to him, there is no loss of gold as there was no gold at all when he got the panels. This means the gold coating of the idols was removed by someone before they were handed over to Potty.

But the recent unearthing of an email sent by Potty on August 11, 2019, from Bangalore, to the president of the Travancore Devaswom Board, contradicts his own statement that he had received idols with copper panels and not gold-plated ones. In the email, Potty stated that he had some gold left with him after finishing the gold-coating work of the ‘dwarpalika’ idols. Potty then sought the opinion of the president of the Board on utilising the gold for the solemnisation of the marriage of a girl. It is the unearthing of this email by the vigilance department of the board that exposed the fraud of the missing gold.

As more information on the gravity of the fraud comes out daily, the High Court has posed certain biting questions to the government and the Board which runs the temple. The very fact that there is a Devaswom Minister under whom the Board functions point the needle of suspicion to the Left Front Government. The depth of deception in the whole episode seems to have prompted the court to opine that the missing gold might have been sold to someone.

Several questions beg for an answer. If Potty had been handed over idols with copper panels, what happened to the gold donated by Vijay Mallya? How did the entries in the temple register indicate the weight of the gold when the panels/claddings were taken out for a make-over? Why didn’t anyone from the Devaswom Board accompany Potty while he was taking the idols with the gold-plated panels to Chennai? One cannot dismiss the charge levelled by the Opposition leader V. D. Satheesan, “Both the government and the Devaswom Board are hand-in-glove in this fraud business. The CBI has to investigate the case under the supervision of the High Court.”

A sarcastic comment by a senior CPI(M) leader, G Sudhakaran, who was a Minister in the previous Pinarayi Vijayan Government, takes the cake: “When the government says that Kerala is No. 1 in all matters, does it mean that it is No. 1 in the theft of gold-plated panels?”

The row over the Global Ayyappa Sangamam, organized by the Kerala government in association with the Travancore Devaswom Board, on September 20, is still simmering in the minds of the devotees and the public. Will the pilgrims, as they arrive for a ‘darshan’ in the approaching pilgrimage season, be welcomed by unwelcome controversies hitting the headlines today?