The Shri Badrinath Kedarnath Temple Committee has decided to conduct periodic checks and develop an SOP to ensure that the prasad being offered to the deities maintains purity and sanctity.
Ajendra Ajay, chairperson of the committee said, "We will monitor the quality of the prasad, the purity of materials used, their manner of storage and how and where these are sold. He added that the chances of the prasad being 'impure' were negligible as it was made mostly of dry fruits. "I ask the devotees to offer only the highest quality of dry fruits at the temple", he said.
The temple committee held a meeting with the committee for food safety to brainstorm on how the process could be made foolproof so that an incident like the one at the Tirupati Balaji temple could be avoided.
State’s Food Safety Commissioner J C Khandwal proposed that a standard operating procedure be put in place. This would include checking the licenses of the shops from which purchases were made for the 'prasad'. "The status of the food license, the manufacturing and expiry date and storage measures should be regularly checked," he said.
Another decision was that the FSSAI and AGMARK licenses be mandatorily checked to ensure that the logos and holograms used for the same are genuine. There were also discussions about mandatory training on food safety regulations for vendors at all levels.
Meanwhile, in Lucknow, at the entrance of the Mankameshwar temple, a notice has been put up asking devotees only to offer dry fruits or home-cooked prasad. This is one of Lucknow’s most popular Shiv temples. At other temples in the city too, similar instructions are being given to devotees. The notice explicitly said prasad bought from shops is prohibited in view of the incident at Tirupati Balaji temple in Andhra Pradesh.
This new injunction is in complete contrast to what the Mahant, Divyagiri, of the temple had asked in March 2023. She then asked devotees to buy prasad and flowers only from the shopkeepers around the temple to help in their livelihood.
Shiv Shankar, a prasad seller barely 100 steps from the temple said, "We have had this shop for two generations. Never before have we faced such a crisis".