HYDERABAD: Former spokesman of Praja Rajyam, Parakala Prabhakar, continues in combat mode.
Having left the party a few days ago after assailing the leadership for running it as a commercial establishment, Prabhakar today sought to rubbish the PRP claim that it was the ``only party which had ensured social justice by giving as many as 104 tickets to the backward classes’’ (BCs).
Addressing a press conference here, he alleged that 38 of these were not BCs at all. And in other constituencies, the party had indulged in ``match-fixing’’ by deliberately fielding weak candidates to benefit either the Congress or the TDP nominees.
Ridiculing party president Chiranjeevi’s claim that as many as 95 of the 104 BC candidates were poor, he listed out those who had properties worth a few hundreds of crores.
On Chiranjeevi’s characterisation of PRP as a ``Kalpa Vriksha’’ (a tree that dispenses boons) and not a ``Visha Vriksha’’ (poisonous tree) as described by Prabhakar, the former spokesman said: ``Yes, it is a kalpa vriksha for the owners of the party. For the people it is a visha vriksha.’’ Prabhakar reiterated that Praja Rajyam as a party ``has disappeared’’ and what remains is just a company interested in making money.
In the initial days there were indeed earnest and detailed discussions involving all functionaries but that soon gave way to decision-making by Chiranjeevi and his family coterie.
Denying that he had ever sought a ticket for the Narsapur Lok Sabha constituency, Prabhakar dared the PRP leadership to specifically declare that he had made any such request, either orally or in writing. In any case, the surveys that the leadership was referring to were used to deny tickets to several deserving candidates, he maintained.
Ridiculing the party’s motto -- ``Love is the way and service is the objective’’ -- he said it’s credo was actually: ``Seats are the means and money is the objective.’’ Later, PRP leaders Umamalleswara Rao, VGR Naragoni and others rebutted Prabhakar’s allegations and demanded that he list out the ``bogus candidates’’. They said he had entered the party only to sully its image.