Multiple temple probes lead to din

HYDERABAD: Justice A Venkatarami Reddi is mighty peeved these days. And not without reason. After appointing him to investigate the temple land scam, the government has decided to appoint two parallel official-level inquiries to get to the bottom of the same matter. Though Justice Reddy���bound by judicial discipline���would not utter a word of disapproval, analysts wonder about the relevance of the judicial inquiry���set up on June 14 to look into the entire gamut of temple land allotments since 1995���if babus have been asked to do a similar job.
The former judge of the High Court was given three months��� time to produce his findings.But a month-and-a-half later, the probe is caught in a bureaucratic quagmire, still unable to procure infrastructure and other facilities. Sources said after a lot of correspondence and persuasion, the government allotted one room in Dilkusha guest house to the judge. The furniture is yet to be arranged. Even the budget of Rs 5 lakh was released just a few days ago.
Meanwhile, the government has created more confusion by appointing special chief secretaries T K Dewan and A Raghotham Rao to probe into specific land scams pertaining to temples in Devarayamjal and Guntur. Former minister K Sivaprasada Rao figures prominently in the latter.
Sources say Dewan has already issued a notice to the endowments department asking it to submit the files and Raghotham Rao is also expected to do the same.
The rule book says when an inquiry is appointed under the Commission of Inquiries Act, other parallel inquiries should cease to function.