New Delhi: From dressing like Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and B R Ambedkar to donning the costumes of a Muslim cleric, fisherman and farmer, TDP MP Naramalli Sivaprasad has tried it all to impress the Centre, unsuccessfully though, in to granting Special Category Status to Andhra Pradesh.
The Nandi-award winning actor-director, who has acted in more than 20 Tollywood movies, said he had been trying to express “woes” of the people of his state through the unique way after the BJP-led Centre started hinting at denying the SCS to the southern state.
Once he dressed like a schoolboy, wearing half-trousers, apparently to convey the message that the Centre has turned him in to “the bad boy of the class”. He even donned a saree to suggest the Centre has not been fair to the women of Andhra Pradesh.
Some of the other characters he dressed like include player, farmer, occultist and a cleaner in pursuit of a clean India.
When asked as to what purpose his protest served, as the Centre did not grant SCS to the state, Sivaprasad told PTI his target audience was not the parliamentarians but the people of Andhra.
“I’m trying to make people understand how the Centre cheated the state and also make the concept of SCS reach them. To make them understand the depth of the issue and join hands so that we will be able to get SCS,” he said.
During one of sittings, he arrived in Parliament in the costume of a cleaner. “We want Swachh Bharat along with Swachh Modi (Prime Minister Narendra Modi). The leader should be clean from his heart, but instead he is preaching cleanliness.”
Prasad won the Nandi Award for playing a negative role in Telugu film ‘Danger’ in 2005.
The Lok Sabha MP from Chittoor also faced criticism from some quarters for his unique way of protests. “There will be criticism for everything. But my motive is to educate people and I will continue,” he said.
The issue of granting Special Category Status to the state led to the TDP withdrawing from the NDA coalition at the Centre. PTI
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