The ‘thuppa vivaada’ is intensifying with each passing day! What started as a simple SOP of floating tender for ‘ghee’ used in Tirupati laddus, the issue has snowballed into a full-blown controversy.
The Karnataka Milk Federation (KMF) has now announced that it will stop selling ghee to Andhra Pradesh’s Tirumala Venkateswara temple, which has been a key ingredient for making prasad laddus. KMF says that the reason behind the break-up is the competitive rates asked by the temple. However, in response, the official of Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam (TTD) clarified that the temple has not used Nandini ghee in last two decades except for one year.
KMF, which sells the milk under the brand name of Nandini, has said that it has refused to take part in the bidding process because of the hiked price. KMF Chairman Bheema Naik further added that the cooperative has always prioritised the village milk procuring workers. He added, “We cannot give ghee at the competitive rate, because in the e-procurement tender, whoever quotes the lowest rate will get it. But our rate is fixed. We said we will supply ghee at our rate, but they (TTD) said they won’t give that amount. So we are not supplying.”
On the other hand, AV Dharma Reddy, executive officer of TTD said that the process of tendership doesn’t compromise with the taste of popular prasad laddus and the effort is to make it affordable for everyone. “The procedure for procurement of any item by TTD is on a tender basis. We go for e-tenders. First technical bid and then financial bid,” said Reddy. “In the last 20 years they supplied only once. Do you think for the past 19 years our laddus were bad and only one year it was good, that too with his (Nandini’s) 20 percent of ghee?” asked Reddy.
On Monday, the involvement of political parties added to the chaos. The BJP attacked the state government for hiking milk prices. The controversy around Nandni arose ahead of the Assembly polls in Karnataka when the Gujarat-based dairy cooperative Amul showed interest in Karnataka dairy market on April 5 this year after it announced its entry in Bangalore.
(With inputs from PTI)