The rift between the Anantapur TDP MLA Vaikuntam Prabhakar Chowdhary and the Tadipatri TDP MLA J.C. Prabhakar Reddy seems to have widened and threatened to spill into the realm of personal attacks.
The rift between them started off, with a press meet called by Mr. Prabhakar Reddy in which he set the Anantapur MLA a deadline of one month to install the statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Anantapur – a long-pending issue in Anantapur - near the clock tower.
“I will give you a month to install the statue. If you can’t do that, I will install the statue,” Mr. Prabhakar Reddy had warned even as he alleged that Prabhakar Chowdhary’s much-hyped “planting of a lakh saplings” in Anantapur town was unsuccesful, much against the claims of Mr. Chowdhary. “They [Mr. Chowdhary and his team] have not even planted 2,000 saplings. If they indeed planted a lakh sapling, I dare them to show them to me,” Mr. Reddy had said.
Mr. Prabhakar Chowdhary responded, saying that while the statue of Mahatma Gandhi was ready to be installed, a few statutory permissions were to be obtained besides the approval of the dignitary – Tamil Nadu Governor K. Rosiah – to inaugurate it.
But suddenly, for reasons not quite known to the media or the public, a large posse of policemen and supporters of Mr. Prabhakar Chowdhary descended on Mr. Reddy’s residence amid rumours of an imminent attack by the latter’s supporters on Wednesday.
However, Prabhakar Chowdhary, who came out of his house in Ram Nagar after police started to surround the house forming a protective wall, asked them to leave the place as he did not want to send wrong signals to the public.
