The Telangana Assembly on Tuesday passed a resolution seeking the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian award, for late Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao.
The resolution was piloted by Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao who reached out to the Centre through the Assembly floor, requesting them to honour the statesman. “PV Narasimha Rao ‘garu’ was the architect of new economic policies. His vision and reforms put India on a global map and paved the way for foreign direct investments,” said Rao.
Rao again made a veiled attack at the Congress, accusing it of overshadowing the former PM’s legacy. “If the country’s first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru is the maker of modern India, then PV Narasimha Rao was the maker of global India. He took over as the prime minister at a time when the country was in the middle of a serious economic crisis. But Rao displayed his speciality by appointing Manmohan Singh as the Finance Minister and brought in sweeping economic reforms through 1991 liberalisation policy,” he said.
Apart from the demand for Bharat Ratna, the state government’s resolution has also requested that the Centre install a bronze statue of the late PM in the Parliament annexe and rename the University of Hyderabad after him. The ruling government is already holding year-long celebrations across the state as part of the centenary birth anniversary of Rao who hailed from Telangana’s Warangal and went on to become the first Prime Minister from a southern state.
While Congress Legislative Party leader Bhatti Vikramarka backed the resolution, Asaduddin Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen(AIMIM) the assembly session, saying, “Our party cannot support the state government’s resolution seeking Bharat Ratna for Narasimha Rao.”
The AIMIM maintains that the Babri Masjid was demolished during the tenure of Rao, who allegedly hurt Muslim sentiments and played communal politics by sanctioning a makeshift temple at the disputed site.
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