Andhra Pradesh

TTD Board chief resents Tirumala car rally

Special Correspondent

Terms criticism as attempt to malign him

TIRUPATI: Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) Trust Board Chairman B. Karunakar Reddy on Thursday expressed ‘deepest regrets’ over the car rally taken out by Youth Congress activists at Tirumala on Wednesday, adverse media reports and the opposition outcry that has caused embarrassment to the TTD Board. Addressing a hurriedly convened press conference, he vent his ire on his critics for trying to paint him and the TTD Trust Board black on the basis of a ‘sporadic incident’.

He said after he became the Board Chairman, he had tried to distance himself from the political agenda of the Congress party and diligently avoided things that had ‘political and Congress’ angularities.

Expressing unconditional regrets over the ‘heinous and unpardonable offence’ committed Youth Congress activists at Tirumala, he said that though he was not at Tirumala at the time of the incident, it was at his instance that the TTD authorities had lodged a complaint with the Tirumala police naming all the six persons who were responsible for the bursting of crackers. He said all of them were arrested and cases registered against them under more than half a dozen Sections of the IPC. He admitted that allowing of crackers to pass through the security toll-gate unchecked had clearly exposed the chinks in the working of the TTD security apparatus.

Taking a serious exception to the Opposition and the media remarks, Mr. Karunakar Reddy said that all their attempts to a ‘cry a wolf’ were ‘politically-motivated’. “It is a conspiracy to malign me and paint the administration black for gaining political mileage using a stray incident.

Mr. Reddy asked the media and the Opposition as to why they had kept quiet during the ‘previous regime’ when a heritage structure like ‘Veyyikalla Mandapam’ was demolished against the wishes of devotees, when the TTD entered into an MoU with a foreign company to conduct survey on Tirumala hills for a ropeway, to set-up imax theatre, shopping malls, etc. at Alipiri in the name of tourism promotion, when followers of the Telugu Desam leader like late Paritala Ravi and former Minister Nagam Janardhan Reddy had zoomed past the toll gate without stopping allegedly in an inebriated condition after intimidating the security staff? Were these not desecrations and sacrileges, he asked and appealed to the Opposition and media not to try to play up a solitary incident for their own narrow political ends.

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