CM unwinds in native district

By Our Special Correspondent

TIRUPATI, JUNE 6. The Chief Minister, Mr. N. Chandrababu Naidu, was in a jovial mood all through his hour-long session with the villagers and children of Pitchatur village in his native Chittoor district where he flew in this evening on a two-day visit.

He did not touch on any serious issue nor announce any major policy decisions at the gram sabha which he addressed but kept interacting with the women, school dropouts, sarpanches, and a few men as well in an informal manner occasionally indulging in some jokes too. Forgetting for a while the Telangana issue and the contentious Inchampalli project, the CM got himself into a casual mood in the course of his interface with kids, schoolgirls and with the Tamilian sarpanch of the border town whose broken Telugu could hardly make him control his laughter.

He tried to strike a personal chord with the local people as a native of the district and told them that neither they nor their problems were new to him and vice versa.

He regretted that the once brimming Aarniar dam and its gardens which used to attract filmmakers from Chennai was in shambles due to prolonged monsoon failure and said that it was a classic example of the result of neglect of the environment and related factors. Answering a query from someone in the crowd to link the Telugu Ganga with the Aarniar stream because of their proximity, without committing too much the CM said he would discuss the same with the District Minister, Dr. Sivaprasad, to explore its technical feasibility.

After the sarpanch, Mr. Cotton, finished his speech in part Telugu and part Tamil, as though to test the Sarpanch's image with the public, he asked the crowd to clap if they liked his working and the crowd indeed gave him a big hand except a lone "protestor" whom the CM later found out was an outsider.

Touching down at the border town around 5 pm, he declared open the Rs.1.4 cr causeway built across the Aarniar stream on the Srikalahasti-Pitchatur road.

Calls on ailing mother

Mr. Chandrababu Naidu spent nearly 20 minutes with his ailing mother, Mrs. Ammannamma, at her residence in the posh Balaji Colony area in the temple town of Tirupati. Immediately after landing at the helipad, he drove straight to her residence where she is convalescing from a serious ailment. Mr.Naidu's younger brother and the former Chandragiri MLA, Mr. N. Ramamurthy Naidu, was not around when the CM spent some time with his mother.

The CM later motored up to Tirumala for an overnight stay and darshan tomorrow morning before his departure around 9.30 am. Among those who received him at the airport were the Tirupati TTD's EO, Mr. P. Krishnaiah, MP, Dr. Venkataswamy, MLAs, Mr. Ch. Krishnamurthy, Dr. Rajasekhar Reddy and others.

Our Tirumala Staff Reporter writes:

The Chief Minister arrived at Tirumala half an hour behind schedule late this evening. Immediately after his arrival, he was closetted with top officials of the TTD for a review meeting regarding various development activities.

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