Statesman Tanguturi Prakasam Pantulu’s island villa in Ongole, his house in Vinodarayunipalem and the Salt Satyagraha site near Devarampadu are forgotten for most of the year except on the great man’s birth and death anniversaries.
Little has been done to convert these structures into memorials except for the occassional lip service twice a year on his birth and death anniversaries. His admirers feel that building the memorials would be a fitting tribute to the great freedom fighter and politician who earned the epithet of ‘Andhra Kesari’ for his opposition to British rule.
The ‘Vijayotsavam Stupa’ in Devarampadu village, built in 1935 to mark the launch of Prakasam Pantulu’s Salt Satyagraha and unveiled by Babu Rajendra Prasad, also cries for attention with the road leading to it in an urgent need of repair.
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Several times in the past, VIPs had skipped visiting this site on important occasions like Independence Day, Republic Day and Prakasam Pantulu’s birth and death anniversaries. A library which has a good collection of books on the freedom struggle is also in a dilapidated condition, lament villagers.
“We have been pleading successive governments to develop the site into a tourist spot by building a park. But our efforts have not borne fruit so far,” they said.
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Taking note of the poorly maintained road in the midst of lush green fields, Energy Minister Balineni Srinivasa Reddy, who experienced a bumpy ride on Friday, said that the Government would lay a cement road to the historic site so that the youth could draw inspiration from the life of the great man, who had become the Prime Minister of Madras Presidency as well as the first Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh when it was formed in 1953.
The Education Department would soon construct a new building for the library at the site where Prakasam Pantulu had spent his last days in a mango orchard, Education Minister A. Suresh promised.
Vinodarayunipalem, where Prakasam Pantulu was born, too lacked a befitting memorial, as also the island villa in Ongole from where he had led the freedom struggle and ran his ‘Swarajya’ newspaper. Today, a private college occupies most of the space. Even now, a memorial could be built on the vacant land available on the premises, felt Andhra Kesari Prakasam Seva Samiti leader P. Venkateswarlu.
Prakasam Pantulu’s grandson T. Gopalakrishna said the YSRCP government could draw lessons from the way Prakasam Pantalu administered the State and grapple with bifurcation blues.