Road-widening in Vijayawada: Gandhi statue thrown into water body

Vjayawada: After removing the statue of late leader YS Rajasekhara Reddy, the brazen civic authorities of Vijayawada have removed the statue of Mahatma Gandhi at Ibrahimpatnam Ring Centre and dumped it into a nearby water body.

Though the incident occurred on Thursday, it came to light on Friday after YSRCP activists fished the statue out of water. The VMC officials have already removed the staues of YSR and TVS Chalapathi Rao, the first municipal chairperson of Vijayawada from under the flyover near the Kaleswara Rao Market on last Staturday.

Protesting the sacrilege to Mahatma, the YSR Congress Party activists, including former legislator and Vijaywada city unit president Vangaveeti Radhakrishna staged protests. Speaking on the occasion, Vangaveeti said removal of the statue in the name of road widening was wrong.

He also called on the members of Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), who had been fasting demanding the AP government to rebuild the demolished temples and expressed his solidarity with them. “Given to Chandrababu Naidu, he would even have removed the Kanakadurga temple”, he quipped. He said though statues of Kakani Venkata Ratnam at Benz Circle and NT Rama Rao at Patamata were causing problems, they have not been removed. But, YSR statues have been removed posthaste, he added.

YSRC spokesperson K. Parthasarthi said the prime objective of such acts was to divert the attention of the people from the burning issue of the Centre denying the Special Category Status to the State.