The public meeting by Amaravati farmers on Friday to mark the conclusion of their 45-day padayatra began at Tirupati this afternoon with a bang with thousands of people attending it to highlight the demand for retention of Amaravati as the capital city of Andhra Pradesh.
Though Amaravati Parirakshana Samithi has invited select leaders of various political parties to the meeting, some of them have skipped it and sent their representatives and some others stayed away owing to political reasons.
Needless to say, Telugu Desam Party president and former chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu was more or less the chief gust at the meeting, but leaders like BJP state president Somu Veerraju and Jana Sena Party chief Pawan Kalyan, who openly extended their support to the Amaravati capital cause, were conspicuous by their absence.
Somu Veerraju avoided the Tirupati rally on the pretext that he was undergoing treatment at the Nature Cure Hospital and sent former BJP president Kanna Lakshminarayana to the meeting.
On the other hand, Pawan Kalyan also skipped the meeting for reasons not known and instead, sent his party spokesman Hariprasad to the meeting.
Enquiries revealed that Veerraju and Pawan Kalyan have deliberately skipped the meeting because it was sponsored mostly by the TDP and they would be overshadowed by Naidu, who has been trying to dominate the entire show.
Interestingly, the CPI-M, which has also supported the Amaravati capital cause, announced that it would not be able to attend the meeting.
CPI (M) leader and ex-MP P Madhu wrote to the Amaravati JAC leaders that he was avoiding the meeting as he did not want to share the dais with the BJP leaders.
He pointed out that the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre indirectly supported the three capitals proposal of the Jagan government by submitting an affidavit that the Centre had no role in deciding the state capital.
“Yet, it is unfortunate that the JAC leaders invited the BJP leaders for the meeting,” he criticised.
