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Begumpet airport after his flight is delayed

The plot was both bizarre and cynically cruel. The day of the strike - August 15 - was chosen with grim irony. And so was the state of health of the quarry, back only a day ago from an exhausting triple coronary bypass operation in the US.

The main architects of the plot operated quietly and carefully from behind the screen, conveniently sacrificing the few expendable frontmen as soon as public pressure began to mount.

Last fortnight, when Ram Lal, the Andhra Pradesh governor, returned to Delhi after resigning his post, the wan smile on his parchment-white face betrayed no regrets for having dismissed the 20-month-old Telugu Desam ministry of Nandamuri Taraka Rama Rao (NTR). For Mrs Gandhi's marionette in Hyderabad, the game was clearly up. For her, it had only begun.

The stage for the dismissal of the NTR ministry was set meticulously. The coup of August 16, which began a day earlier, had been planned weeks, if not months, in advance. Nadendla Bhaskara Rao, the traitor in NTR's cabinet who finally upstaged him and usurped the chief minister's office, was nurtured with the care of an assassin keeping his dagger honed.

Lal, cowering under the weight of a murky past as the Congress(I) chief minister of Himachal Pradesh, was relentlessly egged on to act till even he had to make an ignominious exit, cursing not himself but his innumerable critics all over the country.

Democracy could not have been betrayed in a more sordid manner. Beginning with the dismissal of the majority ministry in the tiny Himalayan state of Sikkim, followed by a carefully engineered toppling game in Jammu & Kashmir and now in Andhra Pradesh, the ruling party appeared to have perfected a technique of snuffing out opposition-led ministries.

The governors - either pliant bureaucrats like Kashmir's Jagmohan or genuflecting politicians like Sikkim's Homi J.H. Taleyarkhan and Lal - were cast in a pivotal role in the operation. The brief on which they worked was simply to decide all disputes concerning majority in the Assembly on the lawns of the Raj Bhavan and never - as demanded by the wronged Opposition - on the floor of the House.

The practice, besides giving the Congress(I)-supported dissidents a golden chance to buy MLA's before assembly sessions began, violated all accepted norms of a Governor's behaviour. Perhaps everything in the Andhra Pradesh operation, from the gambit to the end move, had been planned far ahead.

But what clearly eluded the bureaucrat-hatchetmen who occupy Mrs Gandhi's inner circle was the public outrage such an act could trigger. During the two days that NTR spent in New Delhi, parading 161 MLA's supporting him before the President and taking the war right on to Mrs Gandhi's home turf, there was a churning of wrath and revulsion in the media and in public minds comparable only to the Emergency of 1975.

Apart from electrifying a dispirited opposition, it led to something which again had happened only during the Emergency: it even made many of Mrs Gandhi's allies sit up and wonder.

Kamal Nath Jha, Congress(I) MP from Bihar, literally crossed the floor even while the Lok Sabha was discussing Andhra Pradesh. "It is authoritarianism of the worst kind," said Jha, in wisdom however belated.

Kamalapati Tripathi, the ageing All India Congress(I) Committee (AICC) working president, who had earlier justified the action in Kashmir, was withdrawn and reticent this time round: "I have nothing to comment," he told newsmen.

"Shameful," even such a determined advocate of Mrs Gandhi as The Hindustan Times had to headline its editorial. The Times of India, her neutral ally, ran a front-page editorial which shrieked: "Sack the governor."

The sight of an ailing NTR being led away in a wheel-chair to the President, and that of 161 MLA's supporting him filing into the Rashtrapati Bhavan holding aloft their identity cards, had the unmistakable touch of cinematic spectacle. The Opposition rally at New Delhi's Ramlila grounds, presided over by NTR, brought back memories of the 1977 Janata rally in its sheer emotiveness.

 

Andhra MLA's at Rashtrapati Bhavan: National outrage

For Mrs Gandhi's national and international reputation, it was indeed the severest blow since her return to power in 1980. Over 25 foreign television networks lapped up every bit of the grand show around New Delhi's Vijay Chowk - no less impressive than the Republic Day parade - when NTR in a wheelchair trailed by his MLA supporters went to see the President.

The fact that the callers-on exceeded half the number of Andhra Pradesh legislators, coupled with the other uncomfortable reality that the President, Giani Zail Singh, had actually decided to meet them, made the occasion a sure headline-grabber.

The Economist of London put Mrs Gandhi on its cover, depicting her as Goddess Kali and holding in her hands a sword, a money bag and the Opposition.

It wrote in its editorial: "A ruler who regards opponents as demons is liable to start behaving like one... Mr Nixon, 10 years out of the American presidency, has yet to say sorry. Mrs Gandhi, four years back in power in India, is into her dirty tricks again."

For the Opposition, it was clearly manna from the skies. Almost the entire lot - including Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Atal Behari Vajpayee, Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) chief H.N. Bahuguna, the ousted Jammu & Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah, and the Congress(S), President Sharad Pawar - trailed NTR to the districts of Andhra Pradesh late last fortnight to express their solidarity with the Telugu Desam.

The Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) made common cause with NTR from the very beginning.

The ruling Left Front in West Bengal organised a Bengal bandh on August 25 in support of its various demands including reinstatement of NTR as the chief minister, characterised his dismissal as "murder of democracy" and quoted Feroze Gandhi, the prime minister's husband, as having used the same label for the dismissal of the communist-led ministry in Kerala in 1959 through the efforts of Mrs Gandhi.

NTR's ouster is a bulldozing act dressed up in a highly perverted constitutional garb. In Lal's letter to him seeking his resignation, and later on in the brazen defence in the Lok Sabha of the governor's action by P.V. Narasimha Rao, Union home minister and himself a former chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, the Centre harped on Article 164(1) of the Constitution which says that ministers hold office "during the pleasure of the governor".

Narasimha Rao tried to talk the country into believing that this "pleasure" could be subjective, and that the governor had an "unfettered right" to send a cabinet packing.

It was all a verbal smoke-screen for the crucial fact that at no point in the 28-hour drama - between Bhaskara Rao staking his claim to chief ministership at 8.30 a.m. on August 15 and the governor deciding in his favour shortly after noon on August 16 - could Bhaskara Rao physically muster the majority in the 295-member state assembly.

Instead, when NTR and his followers were arrested and forcibly taken away from the Raj Bhavan even while Rao was being sworn in, the records of the police control room showed altogether 159 entries of MLA's - 11 in excess of the required majority.

If three of them had later left NTR, six had deserted Rao to rejoin him subsequently. As NTR told India Today in a choked voice: "I would have myself resigned if I were convinced of having lost majority. In the name of protecting the Constitution the governor has made a mockery of it".

For days after the ouster of NTR, the Ram Lal-Bhaskara Rao duo trotted out trumped up figures of MLA's supporting the new ministry. Bhaskara Rao claimed the support of 92 MLA's (which soon became 95) of the Telugu Desam, 57 of the Congress(I), five of the Majlis-e-Ittihad-ul-Muslimeen (MIM) and four independents - thus adding up to 158 or 161.

But as many as 35 MLA's whose names figure in Bhaskara Rao's list held a press conference in Delhi and unanimously stated that their names had been fraudulently included in the list. Compounding the monstrosity of his false claim, Bhaskara Rao said he had paraded his followers, including these 35 MLA's, before an obviously gullible Lal.

Said a furious M. Ratna Bose, leader of Telugu Yuvatha, youth wing of the Telugu Desam and one of the group of 35: "The fellow (Bhaskara Rao) is a liar. He has defamed us, and we must go to court." With 35 MLA's out, Bhaskara Rao's strength comes down to a mere 126 at the most - 22 short of the majority - and he becomes liable to be dismissed.

 

NTR with Governor Ram Lal on Independence Day: Brazen partisanship

Aware of this weakness, the chief minister and his accomplice in the Raj Bhavan were trying to buy time, and MLA's. The new chief minister began hammering the theme that the MLA's were "not free".

Lal was subsequently replaced by Shankar Dayal Sharma, yet another Congressman but an un-fazed Bhaskara Rao announced that he would not request the governor to convene the assembly "until the MLA's are set free", meaning that he would not take a chance until the pro-NTR MLA's were made available to him for his ministrations and coercion.

This again gave the lie to Mrs Gandhi's statement in the Lok Sabha that she had been "informed" of Bhaskara Rao's decision to convene the assembly within the stipulated 30-day period. The alleged information gap appeared to many as a disconcerting credibility gap at the top.

Equally intriguing was the presence of Y.S. Rajashekhara Reddy, Andhra Pradesh Congress(I) Committee (APCC-I) president, and A. Madan Mohan, leader of the 57-member Congress(I) legislature party, in Raj Bhavan on August 15 morning as unscheduled visitors just as Ram Lal was being approached by Bhaskara Rao with his claim to form the ministry.

Also significant was the arrival in Hyderabad of G.K. Moopanar, All India Congress(I) Committee (AICC-I) general secretary, the next morning and his call to the governor at 11:30 a.m., minutes before the fate of the NTR ministry was to be sealed.

Raj Bhavan insiders assert that this 28-hour drama was punctuated, even in front of NTR's cabinet members who had visited the governor around noon on August 15 with a list of their supporters, by frantic telephone calls from Hyderabad to Delhi.

And Mrs Gandhi still has to explain how the presence of her men at Raj Bhavan all along squares with her statement on August 21 in the Lok Sabha that "the governor's decision was based on his judgement alone and not in any way influenced by me, my government at the Centre, or my party at the Centre." If Reddy, Madan Mohan and Moopanar did not belong to her "party at the Centre", then where exactly did they belong?

Obviously it was a Congress(I) move from beginning to end, using the governor. In the process, Lal trampled on both legality and morality. He only claimed that he had checked the list provided by Bhaskara Rao.

But he denied a similar opportunity to NTR even though NTR had, as early as August 14, demanded the assembly to be convened on August 18. He denied three days time to NTR but gave Bhaskara Rao 30 days - enough to buy a majority through horse-trading.

The odyssey of the NTR loyalists from Hyderabad to Delhi and then to Bangalore was meant only to keep them away from the clutches of people waiting with offers of bribes that could be irresistibly tempting. NTR himself said last fortnight that the "going rate" had shot up to anything between Rs 5 lakh and Rs 15 lakh.

This could be too overwhelming a bait for the MLA's, 35 of whom (out of 199) were peasants and 47 school teachers. P. Upendra, general secretary of the Telugu Desam, complained that "political touts" were already out in the districts of Andhra Pradesh, individually contacting the relatives of pro-NTR MLA's with "offers of money".

In Hyderabad, the combined opposition rally at the Nizam College grounds was more spectacular, and spontaneous, than the city had seen in several years. Showered with affection, even a true-blue north Indian leader like Charan Singh, the Lok Dal president, who presided over the rally, admitted that it was the biggest ovation he ever received "in the south".

The two bandh calls in the city were a success almost to the last shop and office in the twin-city, even though four battalions of central paramilitary forces, two of which were imported without the state Government's knowledge between August 14 and August 16, were assisting the 50,000-strong state police to keep them open.

The protests in the countryside were of a different calibre. At least 26 persons were killed in the first week after the ouster of NTR as angry supporters ransacked and set fire to government offices, railway stations and post offices besides houses of MLA's who they suspected had defected to the Bhaskara Rao group. Workers of the BJP, CPI and the CPI-M were active in organising the protests with a large number of NTR fans in the districts.

 

Andhra MLA Katragadda Prasuna and colleague receiving lathi blows from policemen outside Raj Bhavan on August 16

Highways were blocked with boulders, pipes and tyres at various places during a bandh on August 21. From Anantapur district, where the worst violence had taken place, remarked Neelam Sanjiva Reddy, former President of India: "When democracy weakens, violence increases."

And, most important of all, there was a growing realisation among the Telugu-speaking people of Andhra Pradesh, as well as in the rest of the country, that in the name of winning a political point, Mrs Gandhi was once again prepared to offend the sensibilities of the entire nation.

Though the developments had taken the average Andhrite by storm, the leaders of the Telugu Desam - at least some of them - had noticed the danger signal earlier on when Ram Lal was sent by the Centre in August last year to take over from K.C. Abraham, a Janata appointee.

Lal, 52, whose mild manners and deadpan voice hide his flair for quite a few questionable enterprises, was chosen even while charges of culpable misuse of power as chief minister of Himachal Pradesh (India Today, January 31, 1983) were pending against him.

As Lal moved into the sprawling Raj Bhavan by the side of the Hussein Sagar lake, an impressive Qutubshahi building which once housed the Nizam's prime minister, NTR, in his characteristic stern and pontifical style, issued the grim warning that "there is no necessity for the post of governor in a democratic system". Many of his detractors sneered at this remark at that time, but, as Upendra says, "NTR smelt a rat".

Later on, NTR also went on record saying that governors often acted as "spies" for the Centre. Lal, like A.P. Sharma, another Congressman governor in the non-Congress state of West Bengal, struck a hawkish posture first by needling the state Government on the issue of appointing university vice-chancellors.

As ex-officio chancellor, he disregarded the recommendation of the state Government and appointed G.N. Reddy, a candidate with strong Congress links, as the vice-chancellor of Sri Venkateswara University at Tirupati.

Meanwhile, intelligence reports were piling up in the state Home Department about state Congress leaders' frequent visits to the Raj Bhavan. N. Janardhan Reddy, a former Congress minister of the state, Rosaiah and Rajashekhara Reddy met the governor at conspicuously frequent intervals since early June in addition to Madan Mohan who met him whenever he liked on the plea that he lived next door.

An evidently disturbed NTR left for his coronary bypass surgery for the US on July l6 without so much as even a farewell call on the governor. Things began hotting up in Hyderabad after NTR's departure, as though by an unseen hand. Communal troubles broke out in the walled city, for the second time since NTR's installation as chief minister, around the third week of July, (India Today, August 31).

While riots were raging in Hyderabad, Pendekanti Venkatasubbaiah, the Union minister of state for home, went on a pomp-and-circumstance padayatra in the affected areas, stayed at the Raj Bhavan, and conferred with the governor as well as Bhaskara Rao, not to speak of the state's assorted Congress(I) leaders.

It is from this point of time that Bhaskara Rao began expressing his dissatisfaction with the state of affairs and started complaining that NTR did not leave him with enough "authority" to handle a volatile situation. It is at his insistence that a ministerial committee was set up to review day-to-day affairs.

Bhaskara Rao's first quarrel was with the Chief Secretary Shravan Kumar, who, on advice from NTR in the US, refused to accord official status to the ministerial meetings and made it a rule that officials would not attend these.

The decision to impose curfew in the old city and to arrest the MIM and BJP legislators was taken again by the chief secretary without consulting Bhaskara Rao or any of his colleagues. Bhaskara Rao now complains that the chief secretary even tried to prevent him from visiting the old city.

Though Shravan Kumar stoutly denies this bit, saying that he merely told Rao that the decision (to go round the old city) was his private affair, it is undeniable that Rao found in his stubbornness a convenient peg to hang his anti-NTR refrain on.

 

Armed police at the mammoth opposition rally in Hyderabad: Showing force

The cabinet was riven with mutual distrust, and, by the first week of August, the 'Bhaskara Rao group' was a recognisable entity. As former minister Srinivasulu Reddy says: "The plan of the Bhaskara Rao group was somehow to create a situation by which NTR is left with no option but to sack him, and then to rally round him."

By August 14, the day NTR returned many knew that Bhaskara Rao would be sacked. Says Jeevan Reddy, excise minister in the Bhaskara Rao Cabinet: "I even told Chandrababu Naidu (NTR's all-powerful and controversial son-in-law) that if NTR dismissed Bhaskara Rao he could pull out 70 or 80 MLA's. But he said Bhaskara Rao should not be spared this time." Jeeven Reddy was obviously sounding out Naidu.

Long before this, the Bhaskara Rao group's arrangement with the Congress(I) had been finalised, though Congressmen in Hyderabad deny this with the injured innocence of a Lady Macbeth when she was told of Duncan's death.

Rajashekhara Reddy says he and Madan Mohan had gone to the Raj Bhavan "to pay a courtesy call on the governor on Independence Day", but at least two defector MLA's of the Telugu Desam present on the occasion have narrated that Madan Mohan had assured them of support from the Congress(I) "then and there".

The Congress(I) promise was meant to shore up the sagging morale of the vacillating MLA's. Addressing his own party MLA's hours after Bhaskara Rao had been sworn in as the chief minister, G.K. Moopanar, provided the catch-line: "Bhaskara Rao is not a regionalist; he is a nationalist".

On August 17, even as Bhaskara Rao was talking to India Today till 10.30 in the night in his palatial private villa in the city's Jubilee Hills area, K. Keshava Rao, deputy leader of the Congress(I) in the Legislative Council and a protege of Union Energy Minister P. Shiv Shankar, and R. Samba Siva Rao, Congress(I) Rajya Sabha member, were sitting in his living-room, packets of sweets in hand. Said a gleeful Samba Siva Rao: "I have come to see my friend.''

The first task of Bhaskara Rao and his three-man ministerial army - comprising S. Satyanarayana, T. Jeevan Reddy and S. Ramamuni Reddy - was to dig in. Bhaskara Rao, who is from Guntur, carefully chose his team from the state's other two regions - Telangana (Satyanarayana and Jeevan Reddy) and Rayalseema (Ramamuni Reddy).

A shrewd judge of people, the new chief minister was aware from the very beginning that both his camp and NTR's were dominated by MLA's watching which way the tide would turn. A moment's hesitation, a single hint of impermanence, would have spoilt the game.

Nor could he relent in persuading the wavering legislators to stand by him. Jeevan Reddy, 33, and Ramamuni Reddy, 34, close neighbours in the city's Begumpet area, converted their official bungalows into reception centres of a sort, complete with shamianas.

The effects of Bhaskara Rao's enticing persuasion were already being felt last fortnight when T. Satyanarayana the speaker of the assembly, and Y. Bheema Reddy, deputy speaker, joined him and were sworn in as members of the expanded 21-strong council of ministers.

Satyanarayana's desertion was ironic: it is he who had testified to the bona fide of MLA's when they went along with NTR to the Rashtrapati Bhavan. And Bheema Reddy's was the third somersault in two weeks. Virtually every second defector got a ministerial birth. This was despite a writ petition pending in Supreme Court against cabinet expansion.

Till August 19, when the pro-NTR legislators left for New Delhi, the new regime's most important task was to stop them, if necessary by storming Ramakrishna Cine Studios, the 2.5-acre fortress owned by NTR in the city's Musheerabad area where between 120 and 130 loyalist MLA's had spent three nights eating community meals, sleeping on the floor and watching 24 rousing NTR movies way past midnight.

In these three days, there were desertions from both the camps: three women legislators, W. Rajasaltku Bai, Grandhi Madhavi and Tripurana Venkataratnam, left NTR on the second day after pledging loyalty to him in the beginning: while Y. Bheema Reddy, surprised the Bhaskara Rao camp by surfacing at Ramakrishna Studios at 2 in the morning, only hours before the MLA's scheduled departure for Delhi.

While Jeevan Reddy and his men kept strict vigil at the airport and the railway stations for party MLA's arriving late, backstreet toughs were seen taking with MLA's hostel at Basheerbagh. P.R. Ramaswamy, MLA from the city's Maharajgunj constituency and supporter of Bhaskara Rao, rustled up a squad of hefty men - many of them wearing sunglasses and carrying sticks - who went round the Ramakrishna Studios and raised slogans against NTR.

 

NTR and other opposition leaders being arrested in Hyderabad: United action

These men gathered near the studios again in the early dawn of August 19, seemingly waiting for the order to come to pounce on the departing NTR-loyalists.

Bhaskara Rao had said a dav earlier that "I'll not allow a single MLA who is my supporter to be forcibly taken to Delhi." But his administration finally desisted from use offeree to prevent the NTR caravan from proceeding to the capital, thinking perhaps that a show of power at that juncture would undermine the effectiveness of quiet diplomacy later-when the assembly session is convened. But he triggered a blitzkrieg of administrative changes from the moment he assumed office.

The principal secretary to the chief minister officiating as chief secretary, Shravan Kumar, known to be a confidant of NTR, was brusquely ordered by Bhaskara Rao to leave the room even while a news conference - his first as chief minister - was on.

Kumar was replaced by B.N. Raman, whom NTR had shifted from the same post in June 1983, soon afterwards. The Director-General of Police, K.G. Erady, was replaced by Mahendra Reddy. The Home Sectetary, C. Arjuna Rao, made way for A.S. Balraj. All this, within five days.

The new Ministry was indeed working overtime to endear itself to many within the shortest possible time. It had won its first battle at the state secretariat where the government employees, fuming against NTR for his unpopular policies such as lowering of retirement age, welcomed the change-over by distributing sweets.'

Said B. Swaminatham, president of the Telangana Non-Gazetted Employees' (NGO) Association: "The new chief minister understands the problems of government employees. He is neither a tyrant nor a dictator." Simultaneously, Bhaskara Rao was unrolling a bonanza of gifts. Examples:

• the retirement age for government employees was restored to 58 years, and recruitment age for some categories of government service was raised from 28 to 34;

• the monthly quota of 20 kg of rice at two rupees a kg for each family was promptly raised to 25 kg;

• students belonging to the backward communities, the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes at the university hostels were now given free meals worth Rs 275 instead of Rs 225; 

• a fund of Rs 10 crore was instantly provided for the development of the old city of Hyderabad where over 60 per cent of the statecapital's Muslims live.

The sops were accompanied by poltical moves such as releasing four MLA's of the MIM who were detained during the communal riots in July. Said Sultan Salahuddin Owaisi, MIM chief and MLA from the city's Charminar constituency, after flying back from distant Rajamundry, where he was confined: "With NTR's exit, the whole state has been liberated."

As Bhaskara Rao doled out lollipops for all sections from his new office - which NTR had left within a few months following astrologers' advice - an official in his secretariat still loyal to the previous chief minister quipped: "The state at last has found Aladdin's magic lamp."

Bhaskara Rao and his henchmen, aware of the pressure mounting on them, devoted their entire attention to public relations-taking out full - page advertisements in newspapers, and beginning efforts at "exposure" of "misdeeds" committed in NTR's time.

However, the real charge against NTR is that he is hardly a politician in the classical sense. Even those who are supporting NTR now say that Mrs Gandhi's brazen act of removing him from power would have been resisted in Andhra Pradesh, and specially among the state government employees, on a more intense scale if the matinee idol had not been seen in real life for 20 months, without grease and paint.

S. Jaipal Reddy, the lone carping Janata legislator who, however, shrieked curses at Mrs Gandhi when police took him and others from Raj Bhavan, observes: "NTR's undoing is that he always mistook the Government for some sort of an extended Ramakrishna Studios where everyone - starting from the director, actors and actresses to the spot boy - has to touch his feet."

Echoed Ramoji Rao, owner of the Eenadu group of newspapers which has been a strident supporter of NTR: "If he gets over this crisis he must mend his ways. Otherwise, we - his supporters and friends - will have no option but to leave him."

His friends and critics both agree that there was an insurmountable barrier slowly rising between him and the party, including ministers and MLA's, since the Telugu Desam came to power. And, having always worked in heroic mythological films, he did not quite believe in delegation of authority.

 

Publicity advertisement put out by the Bhaskara Rao Government: Instant sop

During his two trips abroad since June, he had left strict instructions with the chief secretary that no formal cabinet meeting should be convened and no ministerial colleague should be accorded the No. 2 rank. A senior official said that he suspected any two persons who agreed on a view that was different from his.

And, he also encouraged toadyism characteristic of the studio environment in Madras, such as accepting sasthanga pranam (a feet-touching abjection), and even having others wash his feet with coconut water.

Perhaps he would not have been alienated from the MLA's if he had not inducted Chandrababu Naidu, his ex-Congressman son-in-law, into politics. Popularly known as Babu, Naidu commuted 40 km before the break of dawn from the house NTR built for him in Jubilee Hills to the chief minister's residence to advise NTR both on politics and administrative affairs.

Brash and insensitive, Babu often convened legislators' meetings at the chief minister's residence in the early dawn and - says Tripurna Venkataratnam, defecting secretary of the Telugu Desam Legislature Party - "acted as unofficial whip, telling MLA's what to say and what not to, complimenting those who performed well and chiding those who didn't".

A more serious aspect of this son-in-law phenomenon was hinted at by an industrialist who owns a medium-sized distillery in Hyderabad, who said: "In 20 months of NTR's rule, there were enough smart businessmen who were able to figure out that Babu alone could deliver things which the entire cabinet put together couldn't."

Babu was inducted into the party at the time of second mahanadu (convention) at Vizag last year and by reversing its express policy that those who contested against Telugu Desam candidates in the January 1983 elections would not be admitted. Babu was the official Congress(I) candidate who got defeated by Telugu Desam at the Chandragiri constituency in Chittoor district.

The Government, though raised by NTR on a high moral plank, often got embroiled in petty issues, which again undermined the morale of the state employees. His ombudsman, known as Dhrama Maha Matra, E.V. Rami Reddi, who had unbridled power, aggravated the already souring relations with government employees, numbering five lakh.

Officials shrank from taking decisions for fear of being questioned either by the Dharma Maha Matra or by the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) which had been asked to step up its activity. Compared to handling 1,460 petitions and 442 enquiries in 1982, the ACB handled 2,394 petitions and 1,346 enquiries in 1983. Curiously, the first target of the ACB was a lowly sub-registrar in NTR's native Krishna district - the post he held before quitting government to join the film industry.

So obsessed was NTR with cleanliness of his administration that he planted a decoy to implicate M. Ramachandra Rao, minister of state for labour in his council of ministers, in a corruption case. Ramachandra Rao was dismissed forthwith. Jeevan Reddy recalls that NTR one day asked him if it was true that he had purchased a television set soon after becoming minister.

A perplexed Jeevan Reddy admitted buying one, but said he had bought it on a hire purchase scheme. NTR would let him go only after verifying the hire purchase documents. Forever distrustful of his ministers, NTR commented at the Vizag Mahanadu: "My ministers eat grass (gaddi tintunnaru)." His anti-corruption moves didn't exactly make him popular with his MLA's.

The decision to lower retirement age from 58 to 55, which led to 30,000 non-gazetted employees being thrown out of jobs, made NTR an anathema among the staff. Their hatred was compounded when he threatened to break the strike of non-gazetted officers by use of force.

In addition the brighter among the state's officials nursed a kind of intellectual contempt for him because of his proven inability to read or comprehend long official notes. NTR is on record of having said that he does not read newspapers. "All his learning," said a top official sarcastically, "is from film scripts."

Despite all these shortcomings, if NTR has still been able to retain a large following in Andhra Pradesh, it is because of the brazenness of Mrs Gandhi's action in removing him from power which hurt the Telugu self-respect as it did in 1983 when the people voted her men out of power. The Andhraites are clearly viewing Ram Lal's action as Mrs Gandhi's action.

After 20 months of steadily increasing doubt and disillusionment, many in Andhra have again begun to identify with NTR's cause. However, in the rest of the country, NTR was beginning to emerge - perhaps for the first time - as larger than a messiah for only Andhra Pradesh's 6 crore people.

His ouster came as a dramatic twist in the national political scenario by which Mrs Gandhi's authoritarian intent was not only suspected but became abundantly visible.

As Chowdhary Charan Singh said at the Opposition rally in Hyderabad: "Earlier, when the north voted against Mrs Gandhi, the south still supported her, thinking perhaps that her disregard for democratic norms was confined only to north India. But NTR's dismissal will open the eyes of the north and the south alike to her basic contempt for democracy."

Late last fortnight, as NTR embarked on his dharmik mission "to inform the 60 million Telugu people about the great betrayal by Nadendla Bhaskara Rao", starting with a massive rally at Vijayawada, almost all opposition leaders reassembled with him in Andhra Pradesh, for the third time in one fortnight.

Earlier, they addressed the MLA's loyal to NTR huddled on the shooting floor of Ramakrishna Studios. They ate their meals with them and exhibited a bonhomie not witnessed since the early days of the Janata. "Don't do to your leader what my MLA's did to me," Farooq Abdullah told them amid great amusement even in that tense atmosphere.

 

Effigy of Bhaskara Rao being burnt at Perakalapadu: Widespread protest

In fact, NTR has not stopped being surprising. An enigma for most political observers, a mystery still cultivated with great elan by his supporters who call him anna (elder brother), he represents the indomitable spirit reflected on the silver screen for 35 years in over 300 films, and in living through the heat and dust of politics for 30 months.

And he is back, in his prachara ratham, the propaganda van, his face popping out of a turret, with a beatific glow. And the fact that he is still recovering from post-operative fatigue is only a tell-tale sign of his belief that politics is also a game of suspense and thrills.

The cinematic touch to his political life made every action of his seem dramatic and eventful, including the swearing-in ceremony before a packed Lal Bahadur Stadium on January 9 last year instead of Raj Bhavan. There was a touch of the same hype in his dramatic exit and exile.

In fact, it is entirely in the established tradition of the popular Telugu cinema - that of the wronged hero settling the score, Ramayana style, with his detractors - that the issue of NTR's ouster is being battled out in Andhra Pradesh. Bhaskara Rao is perceived as some sort of an usurper, a bully figuring high up in the local demonology.

When he went to visit Sanjeeva Reddy at Anantapur, his way was festooned with old chappals all the way, and women in his native constituency of Vemur, in the coastal Andhra district of Guntur, were collecting old broomsticks to welcome him. In Karimnagar district, a hundred residents of Jagtial constituency, the home of Jeevan Reddy, sent him a telegram not to visit the place in the near future.

By a gradual process, the lapses of NTR were being forgotten, but the undemocratic manner in which he had been dismissed was acquiring a prominent place in public mind. And as Ramoji Rao said: "He is no longer an Andhra Pradesh phenomenon. His ouster proves that if Mrs Gandhi can do it in Andhra Pradesh she can do it in the rest of the country as well".

The Opposition is obviously hopeful that NTR, despite his uncertain appeal in the Hindi-speaking areas as a speaker, will gradually become a symbol of protest against Mrs Gandhi's oppressive style, a proof of her authoritarianism. Many of them agree that it will still not solve the Opposition's basic shortcoming: that of being able to provide a credible leadership.

Whether or not the Opposition is able to sort out its basic dilemma, the Congress(I) will find in an ousted NTR a much more real threat to its hegemony than a mere opposition chief minister of a state. There are already signs of nervousness in its ranks.

The most obvious proof was the bagful of tricks employed by the party high command to divert attention from the parade of MLA's at Rashtrapati Bhavan by NTR.

Evidently Bhaskara Rao was told to put out the egregious lie that he had paraded 35 of the same people before Ram Lal at the same time when they were having tea with the President in Delhi. And then the fact that Mrs Gandhi had to admit ignorance of her governor's action showed how desperate she had been to ward off a consequent loss of image.

Yet there was no familiar orchestration in Mrs Gandhi's defence within the party this time round. Of the 16 Congress(I) chief ministers in the country, only the unflappable Bhajan Lal - the fabled wizard of defection - spoke in defence of the governor's decision.

He was supported by none other than Gundu Rao, the former Karnataka chief minister who had also come to power through defection. The incident must have touched a raw nerve in both the men.

Even though the cheerleaders are missing, Mrs Gandhi will possibly have to go on cynically dismissing the opposition governments because, as Bahuguna observed: "Barring West Bengal and Tripura, all these governments suggest a verdict away from the verdict of the 1980 elections."

But, in the process, she has wounded a tiger. Not being a traditional politician, NTR retains a heightened sense of personal honour and self-respect - a personality that fits into his screen image. The sullen NTR must now be remembering a film still to be cleared by the censors.

Shri-matvirat Veerabhramendra Swami Charitrais the story of prophetic saint played by NTR who had said a sanyasi would rule the country after a widow.

But life seldom imitates art, and even if it may, at the moment it is too much to expect NTR to take on Mrs Gandhi. There' s no doubt that his toppling has set in motion a chain of events that will culminate in making the next election a far stronger challenge to Mrs Gandhi and her Congress(I) than anyone had foreseen earlier. The issue is and will be, the future of democracy.

[snoww]

 

[reality]

 

[Android_Halwa]

Anna...intha pedda article dada amante time padtadi anna

[snoww]

 

[reality]

Just now, snoww said:

 

 

[reality]

8 minutes ago, snoww said:

 

 

[reality]

1 minute ago, Android_Halwa said:

Anna...intha pedda article dada amante time padtadi anna

He is trying to derail the thread 😂...

[reality]

9 minutes ago, snoww said:

 

 

[reality]

Ok ... brought back @snoww posts in order... after derailment.

[jessee_bb]

49 minutes ago, Android_Halwa said:

@psycopk @MOD23 @afdb_sai

Ie thread ni pin cheyandi vaa...Eenadu ni nammukunte work out kadu vaa..atleast part-2 release aye varaku aina vunchandi

@nanibabu plz ban this gorre langa so no more damage is done 

[snoww]

 

[Android_Halwa]

55 minutes ago, jessee_bb said:

@nanibabu plz ban this gorre langa so no more damage is done 

Ivanni kaadu kani, self ban aipo

[snoww]

One new thing I learned after watching NBR videos is. 

NTR , NBR are cofounders of the TDP party ani. 

ippati varaku telugu vaari athma gouravam kosam NTR started the party ani yellow media lo cheppinde nijam anukunna.