Andhra Pradesh - Tirupati   

TTD board members bow out

By Our Special Correspondent

TIRUPATI, MAY 15. The Telugu Desam Party's debacle in the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections has its echo in the Tirumala-Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD).

The chairperson and other members of its already truncated board today stepped down on moral grounds in the aftermath of the collapse of the TDP Government, which constituted it.

The 11-member non-official TTD Trust Board, the policy making body of the organisation, was constituted in July 2002 on a two-year term with the then Yellamanchili MLA, Pappala Chalapathi Rao, as its chairperson.

But, with the dissolution of the Assembly in November last, Mr. Chalapathi Rao and two other former MLAs -- Gogineni Uma and Jayaram -- who, as is mandatory under the TTD Act, were nominated to the board under the MLAs quota had to bow out of office as they ceased to be members of the House.

The exit of its chairman and two members brought down the strength of the board to eight and made even the post of its head fall vacant.

It was at this stage that the Chandrababu Naidu Government issued orders filling the vacant chairperson's post by elevating a member of the board and liquor titan, D.K. Audikesavulu, to the coveted slot.

During the period when the House was in dissolution the board functioned for nearly five months and even took a number of landmark decisions. But even the shrunken body today bowed out of office, with Mr. Audikesavulu and five other members submitting their resignation letters en masse to the TTD's Executive Officer, Ajeya Kallam, who is also the member-Secretary of the board. They put in their papers at a meeting of the board held today at Tirumala.

Its another member, Manoj Kumar Sonthalia, who could not make it to the meeting, was expected to submit his resignation to the EO in the next one or two days.

Their resignation "on moral grounds'' followed the debacle of the TDP Government in the Assembly elections.

With the board totally vanishing, caught as it is in the electoral vortex, the Government, as provided in the TTD Act, was expected to constitute an out and out three-member bureaucratic body -- Specified Authority, comprising the Principal Secretary Revenue-Endowments, Commissioner Endowments and, of course, the TTD's Executive Officer himself, who would continue to act as its member-Secretary.

This would preside over the affairs of the TTD before the constitution of a new body by the new Government.

Besides Mr. Audikesavulu, the other members who submitted their resignation were, D. Rama Naidu, Ganga Reddy, G. Sudharani, V.R. Panchamukhi and G. Srinivasulu.

Interestingly, both Mr. Chalapathi Rao and Mr. Audikesavulu were elected to the Lok Sabha -- the former from Anakapalli and the latter from Chittoor on the TDP ticket.

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