Congress cleanses NTR statue

By SNV Sudhir

Visakhapatnam, Dec 12, 2012: While family members of Telugu Desam founder N.T. Rama Rao, now divided on political lines, are engaged in a verbal duel on garnering credit on installing more than lifesize statue of the demised leader in Parliament House, scores of Congress activists, came in support of union minister of state for corporate affairs D. Purandeswari.

The war of words between the TD leaders and  Ms Purandeswari took a new turn with NTR’s son Balakrishna joining the issue.

Balakrishna, in a release on Tuesday, launched a scathing attack against Ms Purandeswari and her husband D. Venkateswara Rao. Interestingly, activists of the Congress, the party that was bitterly criticised by NTR, condemned remarks made by TD chief N. Chandrababu Naidu and actor Balakrishna.

As an act of consecration, they have performed abhishekam and  later garlanded the gigantic statue of NTR on the Beach Road.

While lauding the gesture by the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, and the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan  Singh, for giving a nod to Ms Purandeswari’s efforts for installation of NTR statue, Congress activists criticised Balakrishna and other TD leaders alleging that they were trying to  gain political mileage out of the situation. “For nine years, Chandrababu Naidu played a vital role in national  politics but there was no effort from him on installing the statue at Parliament house,” said Intuc youth wing state general secretary Murthy Yadav.

Balakrishna in his Tuesday’s letter asked Ms Purandeswari what she had done when the then chief minister Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy had refused to give the statue on behalf of the state.