For a guy who lives by the ideal of “no politics”, Nagarjuna sure has kept the headlines and flashbulbs warm. His meeting with Narendra Modi though, has taken the cake.
Nag announced that he was only meeting the very “inspiring future prime minister” and that he was impressed with a self-sustaining, WiFi-powered village he found in Gujarat, which beat the sweaty three-hour outages at Jubilee Hills in Hyderabad.
But this sort of apolitical “endorsement” is not new for our superstar.
The Akkineni family has, traditionally, always been ardent Congress supporters. The link has been extremely strong. Father Akkineni Nageswara Rao was great friends with former chief ministers Dr Marri Channa Reddy and N. T. Rama Rao.
Nagarjuna, however, expanded the family’s ‘CM hotline’ and the portfolio of allies. In the past, he famously met N. Chandrababu Naidu, Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy and later, even N. Kiran Kumar Reddy.
In fact, when Naidu was in power, it is claimed that the Akkineni family threw its support in full to the ‘Janmabhoomi’ programme. Nag also acted in some of the TV ads for Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy’s ‘Arogyasree’ scheme.
It has also been rumoured that YSR ‘helped’ Nagarjuna with the Annapurna ‘Seven Acres’ studio and even after the former chief minister’s passing, son Jagan and the actor remain the tightest of buddies. Nag even paid a visit to Jagan when he was in jail. Now, though, the actor is playing it carefully.
Since Modi seems well, ‘promising’, and because relations with the TDP are a little frosty, Nag’s played the safest card. “If we support either TRS or Congress here, we will get into trouble in Seemandhra. We can’t back the other parties, because the industry will face problems here in Telangana. And since the BJP is looking good at the centre, whoever forms government in the state, will have to work with New Delhi. So, it is better to support the BJP,” says Thammareddy Bharadwaj, explaining the idea behind Nagarjuna’s meeting with Modi. The director also added that the Telugu film industry was facing several “taxation problems” involving sales tax, entertainment tax, and commercial tax.
“We appealed to the Congress many times, but our problems were never resolved. Meanwhile, Nag had a chance to meet Modi and it was also a good time to list out the issues Tollywood was facing. I am sure Modi will help Tollywood.”
Absolutely. Who doesn’t like free WiFi?
