Gold theft row | Make Sabarimala a South Indian pilgrimage that works

The running of Sabarimala must align with national comparators where senior civil servants’ stewardship is hard-wired: Vaishno Devi’s CEO is not below DM rank; Tirumala is run by a senior IAS executive officer with explicit powers

In rapid succession, Sabarimala has confronted a cascade of uncomfortable facts. A High Court–appointed SIT has made arrests in the tampering of the dwarapālaka plates; the principal ‘sponsor’ was remanded in police custody; and the Enforcement Directorate joined the probe — prompting court-supervised strongroom checks and even the retrieval of plates sent out for ‘repairs’. The court’s concern is specific: a discrepancy of about 4.54 kg of gold after the idols were re-plated in 2019, with documentation gaps that should never have existed.

What the FIRs say — why it matters

The investigation now spans two FIRs.

In one, the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) has been arrayed as the eighth accused; in the other, the 2019 TDB members have been named as accused, alongside TDB staff and contractors. Officials have been suspended as the trail widens.

This is not an isolated clerical lapse; it is a systems failure that reaches the very apex of temple administration. An enterprise that handles crores in offerings and lakhs of devotees should not be run on amateur improvisation; yet Sabarimala still lacks a full-time administrative expert with a cross-departmental brief, and tenure security at the helm. The statute allows for a Devaswom commissioner, but does not hard-wire an IAS-rank, fixed-tenure executive for the Sabarimala complex — a design gap that shows up, season after season.

A further caution is in order. India’s international antiquities market has, for decades, incentivised thefts and substitutions: originals spirited out, replicas installed, and artefacts laundered through forged provenance before landing in overseas collections. Multiple cases, including the Subhash Kapoor network, have documented this pipeline. A shrine with patchy inventories and ‘sponsor-run’ craftsmanship is a soft target unless custodial discipline is watertight.

A stress test the system keeps failing

On the calendar, Sabarimala opens for worship throughout the Mandala–Makaravilakku season (mid-November to mid-January) and, otherwise, for the first five days of every Malayalam month for monthly poojas. On days it is open, the sreekovil typically opens around 5 am, closes at 1 pm, reopens at 3 pm, and finally closes after Harivarasanam around 11 pm (peak-season days may vary slightly).

Sabarimala is, therefore, a tidal surge, not a township. In 2024-2025, about 53.1 lakh pilgrims and ₹440 crore in receipts were concentrated into a short Mandala–Makaravilakku window; festival clusters drive numbers far beyond the averages. Each year, ~13,000 police are mobilised across phases and ~5,000 on the Makaravilakku day — heroic, but rebuilt anew every November and wound down by February. The corridor — Nilakkal-Pamba-Sannidhanam — is an ecological tightrope; even a 2.7-km goods ropeway must navigate environment/forest/wildlife approvals, rightly rigorous, but punishing to coordinate.

Creating SABARI

As things stand, the TDB’s apex is a three-member body (president and two members) and is entrusted to administer about 1,248 temples in the areas of the erstwhile Princely State of Travancore. Sabarimala is just one among these. By statute, of the three, one must be a woman, and one must belong to SC/ST, with two members nominated by the Hindus among the council of ministers and the third elected by the Hindus among MLAs — a design that is inherently political and, therefore, vulnerable to churn and defections; there is no competence criterion in finance, audit, crowd science, ecology, or digital systems beyond age, religion, and basic disqualifications. At Sabarimala’s scale, that translates into amateur administration without a permanent executive expert at the helm.

The corrective is straightforward: constitute a specialist board of trustees for Sabarimala on the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD)/Vaishno Devi template — retain appropriate governmental representation but hard-wire a full-time IAS chief executive and independent professionals in public finance and audit, civil engineering, sanitation, and public health, digital systems, disaster and crowd management, and ecology, with ritual matters remaining with the thanthris and traditional custodians.

One needs to legislate and create a professional SABARI — Sabarimala Amenities and Biodiversity Area Regional Authority. SABARI would be a compact and professional year-round public authority for the Nilakkal-Pamba-Sannidhanam ecosystem, led by a full-time IAS chief executive with fixed tenure, and a mandate over finance, crowd-safety, assets and inventory, sanitation, mobility, procurement, and compliance. Devotion remains with the thanthris and traditional custodians; SABARI handles the works instead of the haphazard TDB methods.

The running of Sabarimala must align with national comparators where senior IAS stewardship is hard-wired: Vaishno Devi’s CEO is not below DM rank; Tirumala is run by a senior IAS executive officer with explicit powers — designs that match scale to responsibility. Only a professional and specialised agency of this nature can do justice to the needs of Sabarimala.

A national pilgrimage centre

Article 3 allows Parliament to create a new administrative unit from a state’s territory after seeking the Assembly’s views. Article 239 places a Union Territory under the President’s administration, and Article 246(4) permits Parliament to legislate even on State-List subjects for a UT. Articles 25-26 remain inviolate — ritual and doctrine are untouched.

In such an event, SABARI can be expressed as a corridor-focused UT for the Sannidhanam-Marakkoottam-Pamba hilltop-Nilakkal axis (with limited lower-hill adjuncts), administrator and CEO leadership with fixed tenure, a PARIVESH-linked single window, and a statutory precious-assets code that makes a dwarapālaka-style fiasco structurally improbable. Development permissions could be easier under a UT setup.

When a case reaches the point that the TDB members are named as accused and staff across ranks face FIRs, it is not faith that has failed — it is the machinery meant to serve it that has failed. Sabarimala deserves permanent, professional stewardship, transparent money, and metal, predictable environmental compliance, and facilities anchored in the lower hills so the sanctum may be what it should be — serene, safe, and worthy of the vows its devotees keep.

Begin with the missing gold, but end with found confidence — the creation of SABARI, and, only if truly necessary, its corridor-focused UT twin. That is not grandstanding; it is simply the grown-up governance that a national shrine in the Western Ghats has long deserved.

Prasanth Nair is a civil servant and author. X: @PrasanthIAS.

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.)