Telangana: Big Fight on PV

Hyderabad: BRS MLA T. Harish Rao's comments in the Legislative Assembly on the Congress not paying tribute to former prime minister, the late P.V. Narasimha Rao, triggered a war of words between the two parties on Sunday, which family members of the late PM joined IN.

Harish Rao had said that the Congress had denied due recognition to Narasimha Rao and the former prime minister's final rites were held in Hyderabad rather than in Delhi as was done for his predecessors. Sonia Gandhi did not even offer tribute to Narasimha Rao, Harish Rao had said.

On Sunday, Congress MLC T. Jeevan Reddy said that the party had made Narasimha Rao Chief Minister of undivided AP and Prime Minister. “Narasimha Rao's family members had requested that his final rites be conducted in Hyderabad," Jeevan Reddy said.

BRS MLC Desapathi Srinivas added to the party’s charge and said the Congress had insulted Narasimha Rao after his death and that the former prime minister was not a Congress supporter. He said the BRS government ahd celebrated Narasimha Rao's birth centenary.

Meanwhile, Narasimha Rao's son P.V. Prabhakar Rao and daughter S. Vani, a BRS MLC, said that it was not true that the former PM’s body was brought to Hyderabad at the insistence of the family. On the contrary, the family had resisted such a plan.

They said that the body was brought to Hyderabad against the wishes of the family and on the instructions of Congress leaders with a promise to build a memorial for him in Delhi. “It is a matter of public knowledge that no memorial came up in Delhi or in Hyderabad,” they said.

"There is no need to rake up this issue now and reopen the raw wounds. By doing this, Jeevan Reddy has brought back the trauma the family went through on the fateful days" added Prabhakar Rao and Vani Devi.

In a statement later, BJP state spokesperson N.V. Subhash, a grandson of Narasimha Rao, pointed out that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had not paid respects to the former PM at his Samadhi, even though he paid tribute at Indira Gandhi statue which is nearby.

In a statement to the media, he said: “The Congress is a family-run party and people know how it treated PV. The same treatment was meted out to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Dr B.R. Ambedkar, Sitaram Kesari.”

Subhash also mentioned that no memorial was constructed for Narasimha Rao in Delhi and it was the BJP which had issued a stamp in his name . “This was done to please the Gandhi family,” he said. “Then PM Manmohan Singh and home minister Shivraj Patil held his funeral rites in Hyderabad to be in the Congress leaders’ good books.”