Congress MP Lagadapati Rajagopal got discharged from Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS)here on Tuesday afternoon and said he had decided to get himself admitted to the hospital 24 hours ago as a challenge to the government after giving the police the slip at Vijayawada.
He told a crowded press conference immediately after leaving the hospital that he gained access to NIMS to prove a point to the government that it could not stop anyone, more so an MP like him, from travelling across the State’s regions. Mr. Rajagopal did so after Chief Minister K. Rosaiah’s refusal to shift him to NIMS even after the Superintendent of the Government Hospital at Vijayawada expressed helplessness to provide him medical aid when his sodium and potassium levels dropped due to fasting on Sunday evening. When he was put on saline in that condition, he considered his fast to have been broken.
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Dodging the police since then, Mr. Rajagopal said he took 15 hours to travel from Vijayawada to Hyderabad with another objective to expose the “IV fluid-driven fast” of TRS president K. Chandrasekhar Rao. Mr. Rao was on fast in the true sense of the term for only one-and-a-half days and spent the rest of the five days in hospital with the aid of intravenous fluids.
The MP recalled that he had in vain requested the Chief Minister to allow him to take up a fast for 48 hours as the one by Mr. Rao at NIMS.