No official Karthika events: Pawan Kalyan

Vijayawada: Jana Sena (JS) founder president and Telugu cine actor, K. Pawan Kalyan, asked JS leaders, activists, fans and sympathisers not to conduct Vana Bhojanalu in the auspicious Telugu Karthika month. He said that the cadres could attend and conduct Karthika Vana Bhojanalu as their personal programmes. He posted on Twitter a photo on an APSRTC bus showing compensation and aid given to victims of Cyclone Titli by AP Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu. He alleged that the help offered by the Telugu Desam (TD) government was peanuts but publicity was like the Everest. He stated that the huge publicity reminded him of the words of Abraham Lincoln - “what kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself”.

Mr Kalyan’s supporters in large numbers posted tweets referring to Mr Naidu’s campaign about Cyclone Titli and relief activities. An activist, Bhagat Singh, alleged that there would have been no food or proper water in the agency areas but Mr Naidu was claiming to have helped all the cyclone victims which was totally false. Social activists ridiculed the TD government’s peaking campaign about cyclone relief saying that the government had offered little to cyclone victims but was indulging in false publicity about helping all the victims and restoring normalcy. They also criticised the CM’s claim of “Pedarikam pi Gelupu”(victory on poverty), posted Naidu’s poster and claimed that the majority of people in the state were living in poverty. A Cyclone Titli victim, Neelapu Satish, posted on social media that he belonged to Itchapuram and had applied for cyclone compensation four times by submitting the required papers but still, he and other people of Itchapuram had not got compensation.