Tension was thick in the air in the heavily-congested bus stand area of the border town of Nagari on Sunday, with the Telugu Desam Party and the YSR Congress cadres going on one-upmanship mode by installing statues of their leaders.
The YSR Congress cadres got the statue of former Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy installed at the junction around midnight of Friday ahead of their party chief Y.S Jaganmohan Reddy’s visit to the town.
The party Nagari Constituency in-charge R.K. Roja and former municipal Chairman K.J. Kumar monitored the arrangements at the statue unveiling programme.
As the pedestal is located at the junction of the four roads leading towards Tirupati, Tiruthani, Nagalapuram and Pallipat, vehicles, especially buses and trucks, face inconvenience in taking a turn around the circle.
Irked at the sudden installation of a statue, the Telugu Desam Party cadres swung into action. They got a statue of their party founder N.T. Rama Rao installed near the Tower Clock, just a stone’s throw away from the YSR statue.
As a tit-for-tat gesture, party leaders Pa.Ka. Raja, S.S. Ponnuswamy and A.K. Srihari ensured the installation of the NTR statue in no time.
Rather interestingly, neither of the two parties took permission from the district authorities for erecting the life-size statues.
“Let them remove the illegally-installed statue and we will remove ours,” TDP local MLA and spokesperson Gali Muddukrishnama Naidu told The Hindu over telephone.
Further, it is learnt that a local organisation, ‘Ambedkar Iyakkam,’ is getting a pedestal ready on a war-footing on the Tiruthani road to install a statue of B.R. Ambedkar.
