The Hindu : Reporter's Diary: Barnala's `metal detector' test

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Mar 23, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Vijayawada

Reporter's Diary: Barnala's `metal detector' test

Increasing incidents of violence targeting leaders of political parties as well as VIPs has forced the Police Department to step up security arrangements. And, it is not uncommon to see people keeping away from meetings for fear of facing inconvenience due to the heightened security measures. Leave alone the common man, the over-enthusiasm displayed by security personnel in making fool-proof arrangements cause embarrassment to the visiting VIPs too. Lensmen captured the Governor, S.S. Barnala, like other common visitors, passing through the metal detector at the convocation of NTR University of Health Sciences here recently.

What bemused everyone was the way the Governor, who is also Chancellor of the university, made to pass the `metal detector' test.

* * *

Come elections, political parties will leave no stone unturned to campaign about their performance. And Ugadi provides one such opportunity to the parties. The Bharatiya Janata Party did not let the opportunity go waste. Its leaders came out with a colourful greeting card -- Bharat Mata on her `simha vahana' surrounded by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L.K. Advani, M. Venkaiah Naidu and the party's symbol, lotus, on four sides. There were quotes of Mr. Vajpayee about the BJP's dreams of a poverty-free and developed India. At the back of the greeting card was Mr. Advani's call for making India a developed nation by 2020. A clever way to market the `Vajpayee brand' of governance. Isn't it?

* * *

With the separate Telangana issue becoming a major poll plank, the eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation between the TDP and the Congress has only heightened with every passing day. A fortnight ago, the district unit of the TDP took out a procession to `Amarajeevi' Potti Sriramulu statue near the Prakasam barrage. The statue was garlanded by the Agriculture Minister, Vadde Sobhanadreeswara Rao, and a few leaders who were present berated the Congress-TRS alliance describing it as an `unholy nexus' to split the State.

Not to be outdone, Congress leaders, led by the former Vijayawada West MLA, Jaleel Khan, went in procession to the statue and performed a `ksheeraabhishekam' stating that the statue needed purification as it got `defiled' by the TDP leaders.

Interestingly, TDP workers, led by a local leader, Budda Venkanna, took out another procession to the statue the same evening and washed it with water stating that the Congress leaders tainted the statue. But, on March 16, when the rest of the State was observing Potti Sriramulu birth anniversary, neither Congress nor TDP leaders remembered it. When grilled by a journalist on the faux paus, leaders of the two parties had no explanation for their `amnesia.'

By M. Rajeev, G.V. Ramana Rao and R. Balaji in Vijayawada

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Reporter's Diary: Barnala's `metal detector' test