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Jagan’s love for YSR could turn state into cities of statues

 Hyderabad(India),Jan26, 2012: Indians are known for their fascination for installation of statues of political leaders.Be it Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Dr B R Ambedkar, Indira Gandhi or Rajiv Gandhi, there is probably no city or town which doesn’t have statues of these leaders. In Andhra Pradesh, like Uttar Pradesh, the installation of statues is virtually turning out to be turf war between political parties. The reason — life-size statues of popular politicians have come to symbolise a new sense of assertion on the part of political parties. The main opposition Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and the YSR Congress (YSRC) are now locked in a war of words over installation of statues of their respective heroes.
It is turning out to be NTR versus YSR now. While N T Rama Rao, the matinee idol of Telugu cinema, founded the TDP, the late Y S Rajasekhar Reddy was the most charismatic Congress leader in the state who steered the party to power for two successive terms. Realising that statues could provide an ideal platform to perpetuate the political legacy, YSR’s ambitious son Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy, who launched YSRC after exiting from the Congress, and his supporters have been installing the former chief minister’s statues across the state at a frenetic pace. In what has now become a customary practice, Jagan, who represents Kadapa Lok Sabha constituency in Parliament, starts his road shows with the installation of YSR’s statue at village corners. The unveiling of statues has been an integral part of Jagan’s “Odarpu” Yatra during the last two years. The yatra is ostensibly meant to console the families of those who died of shock or committed suicide following the death of YSR in a helicopter crash in September 2009.
According to rough estimates, over 10,000 statues of YSR have sprouted across the state in the last two years. The mushrooming of YSR statues has apparently unnerved the TDP and its President N Chandrababu Naidu who threatened to “demolish” them after coming to power in the 2014 Assembly elections. “The YSR Congress Party is bulldozing its way and erecting the statues right in the middle of roads causing severe inconvenience to people. This is illegal and unacceptable,” Naidu, who was the Chief Minister between 1995 and 2004, declared. The TDP supremo wouldn’t stop there when he went a step further and said that his party would not hesitate to install over one lakh statues of NTR across the state. Taking strong objection to his remarks, the YSRC spokesperson V Padma said that all the statues of YSR were erected by the people who pooled in their contributions besides taking necessary permissions from local authorities. YSRC claims that in some cases, private lands were donated by the owners out of love and affection for YSR, and has declared that Naidu’s audacious remark that his party would install one lakh statues of NTR will not go down well with the people given his background, obviously pointing out at Naidu’s past. The TDP leader had dethroned NTR, his father-in-law, in a political coup in August, 1995 and took over the reins of the party. Estimates have it that each life-size statue made of bronze costs anywhere between Rs100,000 and Rs150,000 with the cost shooting beyond Rs300,000 if the statue is above 20 ft. A cement statue costs Rs30,000 while a bust costs around Rs10,000 to Rs15,000. Congress leaders point out that the way Jagan and his followers have been going about installing YSR statues, very soon each and every house in the state may have a statue of the late chief minister.(source:Khaleej)