The Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) made a move on Monday that is seen as another attempt by Telangana’s ruling party to appropriate the political legacy of the former Prime Minister and veteran Congress leader.
Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, with an objective to claim the legacy of late Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, has fielded his daughter, Surabhi Vani Devi, as its candidate in the MLC polls. Already, the Telangana CM celebrates the centenary of Narasimha Rao and puts his posters across the state. This comes at a time when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has also been hailing Narasimha Rao’s contributions to India and taunting the Congress for giving him raw treatment.
Vani Devi, an artiste and academic, will file her nomination papers for the Mahabubnagar-Rangareddy-Hyderabad Graduates’ constituency.
The move by KCR is significant after his high praise last year for Narasimha Rao, a Congress veteran who was Prime Minister in the early 1990s and presided over massive economic reforms with Manmohan Singh as his Finance Minister.
KCR described Narasimha Rao as a “beloved son of Telangana”. The Chief Minister also projected him as Telangana’s “muddubidda”—son of the soil—who became the first prime minister from south India.
KCR wants to prove that the TRS is respecting Vani Devi with the MLC ticket, while the Congress has disowned Narasimha Rao’s family at the behest of their boss Sonia Gandhi and the BJP has failed to respect the family of PV by not giving him Bharat Ratna even during his birth centenary year.
Interestingly, the PCC working president Ponnam Prabhakar wondered why KCR chose to field PV’s daughter for a losing seat.
“If he has so much concern and respect for the PV family, he should have nominated her to Rajya Sabha or give her MLC seat under Governor’s quota,” he said.
Last August, the Telangana Assembly had also passed a resolution urging the Centre to confer Bharat Ratna on Narasimha Rao. The resolution also sought a portrait of the former PM in the Parliament complex, and renaming of the Hyderabad Central University, which was established by him, as the P.V. Narasimha Rao Central University.