AP CM YS Jagan Writes To PM, Seeks Bharata Ratna For SP Balahsubrahmanyam

TADEPALLI: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy on Monday appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to confer India’s highest civilian honour ‘Bharata Ratna’ to legendary playback singer late SP Balasubrahmanyam. The Andhra Pradesh chief minister has written a letter to the prime minister in this regard.

The iconic singing legend has recently passed away in Chennai after a 50-odd-day battle with COVID-19 and other co-morbidities at the MGM Healthcare hospital in Chennai. Fondly called SPB or SP Balu, Balasubrahmanyam hailed from Nellore in Andhra Pradesh long before he attained international name and fame. With a mellifluous voice and maverick brilliance coupled with a naturally gifted talent in effortless singing, he ended up crooning more than 40,000 film songs in as many as 16 Indian languages in an illustrious career spanning over 50 years.

As a household name in south India, he also made people sit up and enjoy his music in north India as well. Keeping in view his unparalleled achievements, many people have already started demanding a ‘Bharata Ratna’ as the only fitting tribute and reward for all the services he had rendered to the Indian film music. He was not just a renowned singer but an actor par excellence, superb dubbing artiste, very tasteful music composer besides being an occasion producer of films in Telugu.

Though the name Balu is synonymous with Telugu film music, he enthralled and endeared fans equally well in Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam and Hindi. An unofficial breakup of his songs makes it clear that he sang more songs in Kannada (15,000) than Tamil (11,000) and his native language Telugu (over 10,000). It only proves his stamina beyond words and his undying zeal to croon for films.

Several film personalities and die-hard fans, heart-broken by the sad demise of the iconic singer, have been voicing their appeals to confer the Bharata Ratna on SPB. There is already a campaign going on in social media to this effect. Now, with Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy himself taking the issue upon himself and making the pitch for it, the ‘Bharata Ratna For Balu’ campaign has received the biggest push.

One only can wait with fingers crossed hoping that the Narendra Modi government would take a call on this in the near future.