HYDERABAD: On the political chessboard, Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao is always ahead of his rivals by several moves. The Congress party, which has received a series of blows at the hands of the TRS chieftain, has suffered yet again, when KCR arrogated to himself a large chunk of the Congress constituency by owning former Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao and ordering his birth centenary celebrations across the State.
It was a political masterstroke that the Congress did not see coming. The grand old party was not expecting a retaliation of this sort to their claims of KCR teaming up with his Andhra Pradesh counterpart YS Jagan Mohan Reddy and trying to permit the latter to augment Pothireddypadu Head Regulator’s capacity for the benefit of Rayalayseema at the expense of Telangana.
All said and done, PV was a towering personality and had the distinction of changing the course of the nation’s destiny during his tenure as the Prime Minister. As PV hailed from Vangara in erstwhile Karimnagar district, KCR spotted an opportunity to smite a blow on the Congress by owning him as the son of Telangana soil.
Though the former PM left an imprint on the annals of the nation, he had not received due respect from the Congress in the State, when he was alive. As late CM YS Rajasekhar Reddy was not fond of him, Narasimha Rao became a nobody in the State. Even after his death, neither did the Congress provide him any land in Delhi or performed his last rites at Raj Ghat.
After his body was brought to Hyderabad, the Congress leaders left the funeral pyre, even though a major part of his body remained unburnt on Necklace Road. KCR, who is always quick on using the Telangana sentiment to feather his nest, went for the kill by roping in PV’s son PV Prabhakara Rao and daughter MS Vani Devi into the centenary committee constituted by him to organise the celebrations across Telangana.
The Congress leaders insist that KCR showered love on PV, not because he had any respect for him, but only to cash in on his legacy. By demanding a Bharat Ratna for him, he is trying to make a show out of it. “If he really has respect for him, how come he had not named even one district after him?” TPCC working president Ponnam Prabhakar, who hails from PV’s Karimnagar district, asks.