Amid a raging row over the alleged gold theft in Kerala’s Sabarimala temple, the government audits of the Guruvayur Devaswom have uncovered a lack of physical verification of temple valuables, including gold and silver, and notable discrepancies between income and expenditure figures.
The Sree Krishna Temple in Thrissur district is a major pilgrimage centre, visited by tens of thousands of devotees each day.
The audits, conducted for 2019-20 and 2020-21, also revealed that the Devaswom's decisions were not made available for scrutiny after July 2012.
As per the 2019-20 audit report, discrepancies were observed under several heads, including revenue from investments, capital receipts, donations, taxes, capital expenditure, and recovery remittances.
The scrutiny of gold and silver articl