Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Vigilance at Sabarimala

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: All major operations, including counting and accounting of currency notes and sale of `prasadams’ during the festival season in Sabarimala, will be closely monitored by Vigilance personnel.

Official sources told The Hindu on Sunday that the Devaswom Ministry had already apprised the Vigilance Department of malpractices in Pampa and the Sannidhanam during the festival season in previous years and a mechanism would be put in place to prevent such instances this year. Devaswom Minister G. Sudhakaran too is understood to have given a firm directive to end all corrupt practices.

There will now be direct scrutiny of the entire counting mechanism in view of instances of smuggling of currency notes and gold coins by a section of the counting staff recruited on contract with the connivance of duty guards. Gold coins are smuggled out by slipping it under the tongue. To ensure that complaints about middlemen forcing pilgrims to part with huge sums of money for making special offerings and ‘pujas’ without securing the mandatory receipts did not recur, the sanctum sanctorum and its precincts would be brought under special observation.

The system of allocating rooms also would come under the scanner. For, the Devaswom Department and Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) employees reserve rooms in Pampa and the Sannidhanam at tariff fixed by the board and then rent it out to pilgrims at exorbitant rates. There have been complaints that rooms were given out on a daily rent of Rs.40,000 during the previous season.

Alleged manipulation by the works department of the board in sanctioning space for commercial establishments too would be looked into this year, sources said.

Complaints about diversion and adulteration of materials and black-marketing of ‘pradasams’ valued around Rs.4 crore during the previous season has brought that operation also under scrutiny.

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