Shadow boxing over NTR vs YSR legacy unlikely to win Jagan any points

The Telugu Desam Party and the YSRCP have locked horns again, this time over the renaming of Dr NTR University of Health Sciences in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh. On the final day of the Assembly session, the YS Jagan Mohan Reddy-led Government tabled the bill to change its name to Dr YSR University of Health Sciences, leading TDP MLAs to erupt in protest. Thirteen MLAs were suspended and physically removed from the House by marshals. While this was not the first time in the course of the session that the House witnessed such uproar–the Speaker, Thammineni Sitharam, had suspended several TDP MLAs over unruly behaviour just the past week–the renaming of the university seems rather pointless.

It was TDP founder NT Rama Rao who established the University of Health Sciences in 1986 to bring all government-run medical colleges under one umbrella when he was chief minister. Over a decade later, during the reign of his son-in-law, N Chandrababu Naidu, it was renamed NTR University of Health Sciences. Interestingly, YS Rajasekhara Reddy later gave it a stamp of approval when he prefixed ‘Dr’ to the name of the institution. History aside, it gives Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy no real benefit to rename it after his father, political observers say.

“All along, Jagan Mohan Reddy has been trying to drive a wedge between NTR’s legacy and Chandrababu Naidu by selling the narrative that Naidu betrayed his father-in-law and is therefore not a claimant of his legacy. In fact, Jagan has tried to claim that legacy for himself to an extent by renaming the district of Krishna after NTR. Now, with one move, he has lost the whole plot of this Nandamuri vs Nara tussle that he has helped perpetuate in the public imagination,” says Professor K Nageshwar, a former MLC and a political analyst. Actor Nandamuri Balakrishna is the only member of the family who now stands by Naidu’s side, with all the others, including Rama Rao’s second wife Lakshmi Parvathi and daughter Purandareswari joining other parties. Parvathi has issued a statement justifying the government’s move to rename the university.

With dozens of welfare schemes named after him, the late Rajasekhara Reddy, one of the most popular chief ministers the state ever had, certainly does not need a university to be remembered by. Even as ministers and YSRCP MLAs have failed to explain the reason behind the move to rechristen the university after him, sources at the state secretariat say the chief minister may be settling a personal score with the institution. With this, he has triggered a debate on petty politics and given the Opposition a chance to dub him an idiosyncratic leader. “There are some policies and decisions of this government that we as the Opposition simply cannot leave alone. Along with the proposal to set up three capitals, this decision is one we will fight against. Neither Mr Naidu, nor Mr Rajasekhara Reddy indulged in such pettiness. During my father’s time as chief minister, many parks were established in Hyderabad that were named after Congress CMs,” says Naidu’s son and TDP leader Nara Lokesh, speaking to OPEN.

While YSR himself had named the Arogyasri scheme after former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, TDP and YSRCP governments since his time have taken turns to rename schemes after their leaders.

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