The Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) has refuted the charges that the Karnataka Milk Federation (KMF) was abruptly stopped from supplying ghee to the Lord Venkateswara temple. It has also brushed aside the reports that the KMF has been supplying ghee to the temple for the past twenty years.
Terming the reports as ‘outrageous’, TTD Executive Officer A.V. Dharma Reddy, in an exclusive interview with The Hindu on August 2 (Wednesday), said that KMF had supplied ghee to the temple only once in the last two decades.
For the first time, the KMF had bagged the tenders in October 2014 when it stood as L1 (lowest bidder), but is not immediately known whether or not the supply was made. It was only in January 2021 that the KMF was awarded the tender for 20% of the total supply order, despite qualifying as L3 (third lowest bidder).
Usually, the tender is awarded to L1 (the person who quotes the lowest bidding amount). However, at the behest of the then chairman of KMF, the TTD negotiated with the lowest bidder who agreed to part with 20% of the total supply order of 5,400 tonnes of ghee and the KMF agreed to supply about 1.080 tonnes of ghee as its share at the rate offered by L1. But it failed eventually to supply within the stipulated time and took almost a year.
e-tenders
“The TTD procures all the required material by way of e-tenders and it also applies to ghee which is used in the making of the laddu prasadams. Any bidder taking part in the tendering process has to qualify two phases—the first is the technical bid and the second is financial bid. The contract is awarded to the bidder who qualifies both the bids,” said Mr. Dharma Reddy.
After the technical bidding process is completed, a team of high officials visit the suppliers’ factories to have the first-hand assessment of their financial viability, supply capacity, quality and other pre-requisites to the supply of the material.
The materials supplied by the contractor are mandatorily tested at the TTD laboratory and it is only after the certification by the authorities concerned that all the required specifications are met, the consignment is accepted and later recommended for payment. If the supplier fail to comply with any of the required parameters at any stage, the material will stand rejected, said the TTD EO.
“The statements made by the KMF authorities are misleading and atrocious,” he said.
The TTD has always procured material only after ensuring that the required specifications are met and it never compromise with the quality, he added.
