Chennai: The State government dispelled rumours on the Panchamirtham given to devotees at the famous Lord Murugan temple in Palani was being made of the ghee procured from the same company, A R Foods, that had landed in the docks over the alleged presence of animal fats and fish oil in the laddoo given as prasadam to devotees of the Lord Venkateswara temple in Tirumala.
A post put out on X by the ‘TN Fact Check’ (@tn_factcheck) account said that the ghee required for the making of Panchamirtham – a sweet dish made primarily of banana, ghee, honey, jaggery and cardamom – is supplied by Aavin, the apex milk producers cooperative society in Tamil Nadu.
The Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) department that manages the temples in the State had issued the clarification, the message on X said.
The controversy over the world renowned laddoo that is given as a prasadam in the Tirumala temple rocked the entire country after a lab in Gujarat detected the presence of animal fat and fish oil in it.
With several religious leaders and others flaying the carelessness of the temple authorities and the State government in not ensuring the purity of the prasadam, it was suspected that it was the ghee that was adulterated.
Soon a rumour broke out that the same company that supplied ghee to Tirumala was also the supplier for Palani, raising the concerns of many Muruga devotees who visit the Palani temple. So the government came out with the clarification to remove all doubts from the minds of the people.
Many political leaders, too, took objection to the use of animal fat, fish oil and such substances in the making for the laddoo in the Tirumala temple, managed by the Tirumala –Tirupathi Devasthanam (TTD) in Andhra Pradesh.
The private company, A R Dairy Foods Private Limited, based in Dindigul quickly came out with a clarification that its products had FSSAI certification and denied that they were of sub-standard quality. A company spokesperson also claimed that they were not supplying ghee to TTD for the past two months.
The controversy also had its repercussions In Karnataka, where the government issued a notification to all its Muzrai temples to use only the ghee produced by its cooperative milk producers’ federation and sold under the brand name of Nandini for making prasadam
In Andhra Pradesh, many saw in the report by the Gujarat lab a political stunt by Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu to besmirch the name of his predecessor Y S Jaganmohan Reddy.
