Andhra Pradesh - Tirupati   

Naidu launches 100-day road show

BACK TO THE PEOPLE: TDP president N. Chandrababu Naidu accompanied by party colleagues setting out on his 100-day ‘Mee Kosam’ yatra from Chandragiri constituency in Chittoor district on Monday.

TIRUPATI: Telugu Desam Party (TDP) president N. Chandrababu Naidu on Monday gave a heady start to his 100-day odyssey across the State after offering prayers at the ‘Mathammagudi’ located in the Dalitwada of his native Chandragiri constituency.

Significantly, it was in the same tiny temple that he had offered prayers in 1978 when he made his electoral debut as a Congress candidate.

Along with party heavy weights and some of his family members, Mr. Naidu fulfilled certain vows which he could not all these years for some reason or other.

The temple received a fresh coat of Snowcem and paint while the entire Dalit hamlet wore a festive look. Mr. Naidu entered the village amid lot of pageantry organised by the villagers and the local party men.

He stood for nearly ten minutes in front of the folk goddess who was nicely decked up for the special event.

A woman priest conducted the puja and offered him the traditional ‘harathi’ and ‘tilakam’.

Later, he got on board his custom-made ‘Praja Chaithanya Ratham’ along with party top-brass like Yerran Naidu, Yanamala Ramakrishnudu, Nagam Janardhan Reddy, Butchaiah Chowdary, Tammineni Seetharam and Roja.

Though senior party leader T. Devender Goud was also in his entourage along with other leaders like Tummala Nageswara Rao, Nannapaneni Rajakumari, Kodela Sivaprasad, he did not, however, get on to the vehicle top.

Setting out on his road-show which is likely to last 100 to 150 days, he was seen spewing fire at his betenoire Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy and the Congress.

Mr. Naidu said that his yatra was aimed at exposing the government’s acts of omissions and commissions and to ‘unmask’ Congress leaders.

Despite the gruelling heat with mercury hovering around 40 degrees Celsius, he painstakingly went about his mission stopping his ‘ratham’ at all junctions en route.

The main thrust of his rhetoric was that it was time to take a re-look at the reforms regime which, far from benefiting the poor had only made billionaires of millionaires.

He reiterated that he, along with like-minded parties, was trying to reorient the reforms regime in such a way that its entire benefit went to the poor and peasant community and all the distortions it had caused to our socio-economic sector were set-right.

The fact that it took nearly four hours for his huge convoy with more than 600 vehicles to reach Tirupati.

This clearly reflected the scale of reception he received en route from people who were seen waiting on the roads unmindful of the hot conditions under the specially erected pandals amid drumbeats.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

New seva at Srinivasa Mangapuram
Naidu launches 100-day road show
Announces freebies

Copyright © 2008, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu