Speakers from the political field who spoke at an event organised as part of the birth centenary celebrations of matinee idol and former Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh N.T. Rama Rao here on Saturday said that the actor-turned-politician always stood for probity in public life and fought for democracy and federal system in the country.
General secretary of CPI (M) Sitaram Yechury said as a student activist and young politician he always looked at former Chief Minister for West Bengal Jyoti Basu and N.T. Rama Rao who fought for strengthening the federal structure in the country’s democracy. He always practised principled politics.
Attributing the credit of V.P. Singh becoming Prime Minister of the country with the help of regional political parties in 1989 to late NTR, general secretary of CPI D. Raja said NTR fought hard for recognition of regional parties at national level with a view that regional parties were indispensable in a diverse country like India. It was due to NTR’s fight that federal system was strengthened in the country and he was a pro-poor politician with focus on providing food, clothing and shelter to the poor.
Governor of Haryana Bandaru Dattatreya said late NTR would be known for, apart from his pro-poor policies, scrapping ‘patel-patwari-karanam’ system in land administration as the people had suffered badly with them. He was also against enmity in politics as he strongly believed that there would only be adversaries in politics and not enemies.
Telugu Desam Party (TDP) president N. Chandrababu Naidu and former Union Minister D. Purandeswari participated in the event as part of the family of NTR.
Several film personalities of yesteryear and present generations including Jayasudha, Jayaprada, Prabha, D. Venkatesh, Shivaraj Kumar, M. Muralimohan, Ram Charan, Naga Chaitanya, Sumanth, scores of others linked to the on-screen and off-screen roles spoke at the event. Family members of NTR including N. Balakrishna, and those from political field participated in the event.
A website, Jai NTR, was launched and a book titled Satapurushudu was released on the occasion. A 45-minute dance ballet based on the movies of NTR was also was performed.