New Delhi:

Religion and politics cannot be allowed to mix, the Supreme Court said Monday while hearing three petitions over allegations that animal fat was found in the ghee used to make the laddoos, or devotional offerings, ‘fed’ to the deity and given to devotees at Andhra Pradesh’s Tirupati temple.

In a series of pointed questions and sharp observations, the top court underlined the lack of definitive proof of contamination of ghee or, if it was indeed contaminated, that the affected ghee was used to make the laddoos. The court also pointed to an ongoing inquiry and a “false positive” testing caveat.

The court took a dim view of Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu’s public statements on this contentious issue, particularly as his administration had already ordered an inquiry into the findings of a Gujarat lab July’s report claiming fish oil, beef tallow, and lard (pig fat) were found in the ghee.

“When you (the Chief Minister) hold a Constitutional post… we expect Gods to be kept away from politics. If you had already ordered (an) investigation, what was the need to go to the press? The lab report came in July… your statement came in September. (And) the report is not at all clear…”

A bench of Justice BR Gavai and Justice KV Viswanathan was distinctly unhappy with the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister’s September 20 comments, in which he hit out at his rival and predecessor, YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, over the alleged presence of animal fats in Tirupati laddoo ghee.

The matter was then directed for Thursday afternoon, with the court warning the Chief Minister against a ‘hat-trick’ of unnecessary comments. “There should be restraint…” he was told.

READ | Andhra Government Cites Lab Report In Row Over Animal Fat

Mr Naidu’s comments were soon echoed by members of his Telugu Desam Party and allies Jana Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party, triggering a massive political row in the southern state. The Chief Minister also proclaimed, and carried out, a ‘purification’ ceremony for the famous temple.

READ | Tirupati Temple ‘Purified’ Amid Row Over Animal Fat In Ghee

Responding to the allegations and attacks, Mr Reddy and his YSR Congress Party have slammed the “malicious” claims and accused the TDP of lying for political gain. The party also said it was Mr Naidu, in fact, who had damaged the temple’s sanctity by making outrageous comments. Mr Reddy later even wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and accused Mr Naidu of being a “pathological liar”.

The row was dragged to the Supreme Court after petitions were filed by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy and YSRCP Rajya Sabha MP YV Subba Reddy. Mr Reddy also served as Chair of the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam, which is the state-run trust that manages the Tirupati temple.

READ | Health Ministry Wants Report As Tirupati Laddoo Row Escalates

Mr Swamy’s petition requests the court to direct the Andhra government to file a detailed forensic report, while Mr Reddy’s asks for an independent special investigation team to probe the charges.

In this, the first day of hearing these petitions, the court came down sharply on the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, noting “You ordered a special investigation. Till the outcome… what was the need to go to the press? You have been always appearing for such… this is the second time…”

The irked top court also pointed out it has not yet been established if the ghee – about which complaints over quality had been received – was, in fact, used to make the laddoos.

Told the investigation into the quality of the ghee is ongoing, Justice Gavai shot back again, “(Then) what was the need to go to the press immediately? You need to respect religious sentiments.”

“Where is proof this was the ghee used to prepare the laddoos?” the court asked, pointing out that tankers delivered on July 6 and 12 were tested and, according to the temple management, never used.

The lab referred to samples from these tankers and not deliveries in June which were used till July 4.

The court also made public a disclaimer in the report prepared by the Centre of Analysis and Learning in Livestock and Food lab at the National Dairy Development Board in Gujarat.

Urging senior advocate Siddhartha Luthra, appearing for the TDP, to read it aloud, the court said, “Public (may) not be aware of this… you (the Chief Minister) only gave a statement…”

Mr Luthra then read out, “A false positive can be obtained…method is not applicable to…” and Justice Vishwanathan then said, “Does not prudence dictate you take a second opinion (before going public)? Normally we take a second opinion… no proof that said ghee was used.”

NDTV Explains | How The Laddoos Made And How Ingredients Are Procured

The kitchen at Tirupati makes around three lakh laddoos daily, with around 1,500 kg of ghee and vast amounts of cashew nuts, raisins, cardamoms, gram flour, and sugar used. Reports indicate the ghee was bought from a supplier in Tamil Nadu’s Dindigul.

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Members of Hindu organisations stage a demonstration at Garuda Circle, the entry point to Tirumala hills, in Tirupati on September 26, 2024. Photo: Special Arrangement

The story so far: Laddu prasadams from the temple town of Tirupati have left a bad taste after reports that the ghee from cow milk, the traditional ingredient, may have been adulterated with fat from multiple sources including beef tallow.

What are the allegations?

A technical report from the Centre for Analysis and Learning in Livestock and Food (CALF) of the National Dairy Development Board, which analysed samples of ghee supplied to the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams, the manager of the shrine, found that it was adulterated.

There was fat from soya bean, sunflower oil, rapeseed oil, linseed, wheat germ, maize germ, cotton seed, fish oil, coconut and palm kernel fat, palm oil, beef tallow and lard.

Editorial | Politicising the laddu: On the Tirupati laddu and its ‘adulteration’

While allegations that adulterated ghee was being used for preparing the prasadam have been swirling for months, it was the first time that animal fat — from beef and pigs — was mentioned by no less than Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, Chandrababu Naidu, at a public forum.

What’s the process to find out if milk fat is adulterated?

Milk fat, like all organic fats, consists of triglycerides. They are glycerols connected to fatty acids and the carbon chains that constitute them are a characteristic feature of triglycerides. There are ‘short chain,’ ‘medium chain’ and ‘long chain’ fatty acids defined by the number of carbon atoms in these chains. Milk fat has more than 400 structurally different fatty acids and can combine in various ways to form thousands of triglyceride molecules. Thus, triglyceride patterns in cow ghee differ from the ghee made from goat milk, lard, soya bean or other vegetable oils. Given that cow ghee is expensive, adulterating it with cheaper fat is an age-old practice, and an array of methods have evolved to detect adulteration. For precision, the state-of-the-art method in the dairy industry is the use of gas chromatography. This method can be used to separate the chemical constituents of a sample mixture made up of organic compounds. These machines are expensive and can cost ₹30-40 lakh but are the standard in reputed outlets. Much like an electrocardiogram generates a signal of oscillating waves meant to represent heart beats, the result of a gas chromatography analysis of a sample of ghee is a characteristic wave form that shows the proportion of different types of triglycerides. Pure cow ghee has a characteristic pattern different from vegetable oil or lard (pig fat).

For adulteration analysis, the German scientist Dietz Precht, in 1991, came up with a set of five equations. Each of them generated an ‘s value’ (standard value) and can be used to determine specific adulterations. The value from s1 points to adulteration with soya bean, sunflower oil, rapeseed, fish oil; s2 to coconut and palm kernel fat; s3 to palm oil and beef tallow; s4 to lard and s5 to the total adulterated fat in a given specimen. For a ghee sample to be pure cow ghee, all five of these values must lie in a specified range that’s within a window of 3 or 4 points to 100. However, even if one of these values lies outside the prescribed range, it points to the presence of a ‘foreign fat.’ This process is the standard protocol recommended by the International Standards Organisation (ISO) and followed in reputed Indian laboratories such as CALF.

What did the analysis of fat in the Tirupati laddus find?

Two samples of cow ghee were tested. All of the values (s1-s5) in both samples were outside their prescribed ranges. For example, in one of the samples, the s3 value —linked to palm oil and beef tallow — was 22.43, out of the prescribed range of 95.9 to 104.1. However this alone doesn’t indicate the presence of beef tallow. “Although individual s-values (i.e. s1, s2, s3 & s4 ) are more sensitive for certain foreign fats than the general s-value (s5), the positive result obtained in only one s-value does not allow to draw a conclusion on the type of foreign fat,” says a review of the Precht method in the Indian Journal of Dairy Science in October 2023 by K.D. Aparanthi, of the Anand Agricultural University, and co-authors. “…In actual practice, particular foreign fat generally remains unknown, since most of the foreign fats are identified by the method as a group and not as a particular foreign fat (except lard). [The] same problem also arises when a blend of foreign fats is mixed in milk fat.” Moreover, the number in this case, s3=22.43, doesn’t denote a percentage or the quantity of a substance. Under the prescribed tests, the intrusive ‘foreign’ fat can be calculated when the ‘s’ values exceed 100. This isn’t the case for s3, here.

Are there established methods to differentiate the sources of fat?

There are mathematical ways to interpret the individual ‘s’ values to determine the presence of specific kinds of fat but these haven’t been specified in the CALF report. While these methods were developed for European cows, applying it to Indian bovines could require changing the ‘s’ values. These can be calculated only after a database on the biochemistry of ghee in Indian cows, which may have different genetics, and Indian tallow is known. “There is wide biological variation within a species. However, using spectography methods we can accurately detect the nature and percentage of adulterants provided good baseline data, specific to Indian conditions, is available,” Dr Madhusudhan Rao, scientist at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad told The Hindu.