Row over late Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhar Reddy’s portrait removal

Hyderabad: The removal of late Chief Minister Y.S.Rajasekhar Reddy’s life size portrait from the AP Assembly lounge by Assembly staff kicked up a political controversy with YSRC legislators deciding to meet the Speaker on Tuesday to protest.

The lifesize portrait of YSR was installed in the Assembly lounge during K. Rosaiah as Chief Minister and N. Kiran Kumar Reddy as Speaker citing the reason that YSR died while in office. However, after bifurcation of the state, the Assembly lounge in the new building was allotted to AP Assembly. Chief Minister and TD Legislature party leader N. Chandrababu Naidu had to conduct his party meetings in the lounge due to space crunch and had to face the portrait who was none other than his arch political rival. However, in the name of arrangement for the legislature party meetings, the portrait used to be covered by some wooden partition board.

When contacted AP Assembly secretary K. Satyanarayana Rao told this newspaper that three days ago the Assembly staff noticed that the frame of the portrait had become weak and was likely to fall damaging the portrait hence they have removed and kept it in a room. “After getting it repaired we will again put up the portrait,” he said. Meanwhile, YSR Congress criticised the removal of the portrait without anyone’s noticing and threatened to protest.