Two days ahead of the formal announcement of the state by-elections scheduled for June 12, the Election Commission has ordered covering of all the statues of former chief ministers Y S Rajashekhara Reddy, N T Rama Rao and former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.
The EC took the decision, as in the case of masking statues of Mayawati during the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, after it received several complaints by the Congress and the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) that YSR Congress president Y S Jaganmohan Reddy was on an “YSR statue unveiling spree” during his “Odarpu yatra.” The YSRC has allegedly installed nearly 2,200 YSR statues in 16 districts, including Hyderabad and Nizamabad.
The complaint said another 2,000 statues and busts of YSR were installed in Vijayawada, fishermen hamlets and localities of weaker section in various districts.
Door-to-door campaign
The Election Commission has also banned the door-to-door campaign during the period of 48 hours before the beginning of the poll. Ironically, there were only 700 statues and busts of NTR in all the coastal, Rayalaseema and Telangana districts.
The TDP avoided NTR statues till 2003 for the fear that the move would only help NTR's wife Lakshmiparvati, who had floated her own party. A life statue of NTR was put in NTR Bhavan only in June 2003, almost 10 months ahead of the general election of 2004.
The Congress had put a lid on the YSR statue campaign since November 2010 after the Jagan launched his own party. Although the Congress had planned a memorial for YSR on the lines of NTR ghat near the State Secretariat, nothing has materialised so far.
Likewise, though a memorial has been built on a five-acre forest area at the spot where YSR’s helicopter crashed in Kurnool district, it is yet to be inaugurated.
from Deccan herald
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