The Tirumala Tirupati Pedda Jeeyar and Chinna Jeeyar condemned as ‘blatant lies’ the social media posts about non-performance of mandatory rituals and appealed to people to not believe the posts that portrayed the Tirumala temple in a bad light.
Some of the unverified facts, which he called ‘deliberately floated lies’, included non-offering of ‘Naivedyam’ as prescribed in the religious texts to Lord Venkateswara.
There was also a rumour that the ‘Akhanda Deepam’, the main oil wick lamp in the sanctum sanctorum, had extinguished during the period when the temple was closed to public due to COVID-19 restrictions.
Apart from the social media posts, the clarification was also necessitated by the complaint allegedly made by a temple priest to the government that the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) officials were forcing the priests to hurry up their scheduled rituals within the shrunken time.
‘No violation’
The Pedda Jeeyar Swamy told the media here on Monday that the offerings (Naivedyam) to Lord Venkateswara had not been diluted and the ‘Dittam’ (standard measures) was being scrupulously followed.
“Bhagawad Ramanuja established the Mutt and prescribed the code of worship in the 12th century to be followed in tune with the guidelines of Vaikhanasa Agama. The successive pontiffs who have held this post have been following the same and there is no violation as is being alleged,” he clarified.
Pointing to the TTD providing food to nearly 50,000 people in Tirupati everyday during the time of crisis, the pontiff laughed away the charge that the food offerings to the Lord had been reduced. He, however, explained that only the Prasadam meant to be distributed among devotees had been suspended in the wake of closure of darshan for pilgrims.
