HYDERABAD: The race for Tollywood’s Movie Artistes’ Association (MAA) elections took a new twist on Friday, after small-time actor O Kalyan filed a petition in the city civil court against the irregularities in MAA elections.
Accusing Murali Mohan’s panel of collecting `1 lakh for MAA membership, the petitioner mentioned that no one had any clue on `3 crore fund collected till date. He sought a stay order on the MAA president election. However, the civil court after hearing both arguments, gave the green signal for the elections scheduled for Sunday. However, the court directed the association to announce the results only with the permission of the court. Actor O Kalyan, who is contesting for the post of executive vice-president against Tanikella Bharani (Jayasudha’s panel), had accused in his petition that the elections are being conducted violating the byelaws and requested the court to change the election officers.
Meanwhile, the plot thickened in the already politicised MAA elections, where contestants have closely matched our local politicians in spewing venom at each other, when veteran actress Jayasudha made a mockery of her rival candidate Rajendra Prasad’s promises, and then went on to make a slew of promises of her own.
“A lot has been said over the last few days by the opposing candidate but I’m not here to respond to that. As I said, this is not a political platform and we are here for the artistes,” Jayasudha said.
Her promises include providing employment to poor artistes, donating funds, organising cultural programmes across AP and Telangana, apart from providing pension, insurance and helping the artistes in need.
“We don’t want to say that we will give some amounts to the artistes. We would instead give them work, so that they can make an honest living. For funds, we would start with donating money from our own homes and then would collect donations from other industry bigwigs,” she said.
Rajendra Prasad, on Wednesday, had promised to build the best ever film industry building in the country if he is voted as president. Responding to that, Jayasudha said, “The Film Chamber of Commerce has a vast reputation and there is no reason for MAA members to be ashamed of this current building. Yes, buildings are important but there are other pressing matters.”
Another member of Jayasudha’s panel actor Naresh, who is vying for the post of joint secretary said: “When Rajendra Prasad was asked as to how many members were there in MAA, he said either 600 or 700. The man doesn’t even know how many people are there in the association,” exclaimed Naresh.