TIRUPATI: The 85th birthday celebrations of TDP founder N.T. Rama Rao unravelled the social face of the party, with hundreds of activists taking part in the blood donation camp on Monday and coming forward to run mobile clinics in backward areas.

No sooner did the president N. Chandrababu Naidu give a call to "rededicate ourselves" to social service than a number of workers expressed their willingness to take up charitable activities voluntarily.

Mr. Naidu's thunderous claim of transforming the party into a social organisation came as no exaggeration as the TDP was the first political party in the entire country to have collected 40,000 units of blood. Buoyed with the response, Mr. Naidu announced that a `blood bank' would be established at Hyderabad soon.

Mobile clinics

Similarly, Ch.Varaprasad (Krishna), G. Punna Rao (Guntur), Madhu Sekhar (Nizamabad), Rajasekhar Reddy (Kurnool) and Dharma Reddy (Nalgonda) and N. Nageswara Rao (Khammam) came forward to set up mobile clinics in the backward pockets of their districts by contributing 50 per cent of the cost, while the other half would be met from the NTR Memorial Trust.

Earlier, Mr. Naidu celebrated `NTR Jayanti' in the midst of special children by cutting a cake and offering it to the inmates of Sri Venkateswara School for the Deaf and Dumb. He also distributed clothes and books to them. Mr. Naidu accused the Government of unleashing `political vendetta' by trying to prevent its cadres from attending the public meeting on Tuesday, coinciding with the conclusion of the Silver Jubilee Mahanadu.

Addressing delegates, he said the APSRTC authorities were `dodging' the issue of providing buses on hire basis for transporting people from different parts. Later, a group of TDP activists staged a dharna in front of APSRTC regional manager's office here.

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