A report submitted by the former Comptroller and Auditor general, Vinod Rai to the Supreme Court says that 186 crore worth of gold is missing from the Padmanabhaswamy Temple.

According to sources, the report by former Comptroller and Auditor general Vinod Rai are in two volumes and five parts running into 1,000 pages. The Supreme Court had asked Rai in October 2015 to complete the audit and submit its report.

This directive came on the recommendations of amicus curiae and senior advocate Gopal Subramaniam, who had sought overhauling of the functioning of the temple.

According to Rai’s report, if 822 gold pots were melted to meet the requirements of gold for ornamental works at the palace, then there should have been at least 1,166 gold pots left in the treasury. But the numbers assigned to gold pots by the expert committee were only 397.

The discrepancy is of 769 gold pots with an aggregate weight of 776 kg approximately valued at Rs 186 Cr.
572.86 g of gold and 2589 grams of silver with an aggregate value of Rs 14.78 lakhs which were received through the hundials while counting has not been entered in the Nadavaravu register.

Out of 22 silver bars taken out of the B vault in Dec 2002, 16 were issued for renovation work. “There were 5 big silver bars weighing an average of 35 kg”, according to the report submitted by Amicus curiae Gopal Subramaniam. Therefore it would mean that there was a shortage of 1 silver bar of Rs 14 lakh.

The temple did not have a system of ascertaining the weight and purity of gold and silver articles before handing it over to the contractors for ornamentation works. There was a lack of transparency in Kanikka counting. Kanikka registers from Dec 2006 to Nov 2008 were not made available to the special audits authority for scrutiny.

Rai’s report has been comprehensive and he has also made the observation that there has been an “abnormal” increase in expenditure at the temple and he has recommended a committee to probe into these irregularities.