Hyderabad, April 14: Chief ministers Chandrababu Naidu and Chandrasekhar Rao, criticised for their silence on Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula's suicide, have announced plans to build the "world's tallest" statues of community icon B.R. Ambedkar in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
Both governments have said the statues will be 125ft high - to mark Ambedkar's 125th birth anniversary being celebrated this year.
The Chandrababu Naidu government was the first to make the announcement a few weeks ago and said it was finalising a site in Amaravati - the new capital coming up in Guntur after the 2014 bifurcation.
But Rao appeared to have stolen the march by laying the foundation of a bronze statue near the Hussain Sagar Lake in the heart of Hyderabad today, the day Ambedkar was born. Both idols are to be unveiled on April 14 next year.
The chief ministers had so far kept a calculated distance from PhD scholar Rohith's January 17 suicide at the University of Hyderabad over alleged caste bias and the Dalit student movement - based on Ambedkar's ideals - his death triggered across campuses. Several leaders, including Rahul Gandhi, had made a beeline for the Hyderabad varsity. While the varsity is in Telangana, Guntur, Rohith's hometown, is in Andhra Pradesh.
"While Naidu is an NDA partner, Rao is also gravitating towards the BJP-led alliance. So it was difficult for both to speak on behalf of the protesting students whose main demand is the sacking of Union ministers Smriti Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya. Both states being new, they expect support from the Centre, especially in education. So they were being practical by not rubbing the Centre the wrong way," said Jinka Nagaraju, a political observer.
Dattatreya, the Union labour minister accused by students of abetting the suicide, is said to be well regarded by Rao.
Forced by the Opposition in the Assembly into a discussion recently on the unrest, Rao had announced that he would speak to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, including the students' demands to remove vice-chancellor Appa Rao Podile. But Venkatesh Chauhan, convener of the varsity's Joint Action Committee for Social Justice that is leading the protests for justice in the Rohith case, said today Rao had not acted on his word so far.
Last week, police took several students of Osmania University, also in Hyderabad, into custody as they tried to lay siege to Rao's office over the same demands. "With the Centre unyielding on the demand to remove the ministers or even the VC, probably the chief minister thought it better not to interfere in the matter," an aide of Rao said.
The Ambedkar statue project is also being seen as a possible atonement attempt by Rao, who had during his statehood agitation vowed to make a Dalit the first chief minister, only to take the crown himself.
Rao had also promised three acres for each Dalit landless family and, with that pledge only partially fulfilled, the statue would help him appear wedded to the Dalits' cause, some observers said.
In Andhra, the statue will come up along the Krishna river. "It will be the tallest statue of Ambedkar in the world," said social welfare minister Ravela Kishore Babu, echoing his Telangana counterparts. "The project includes a Buddhist Centre and Ambedkar Museum and Library, to be executed at a cost of Rs 212 crore," Babu said. Both idols will come up near statues of Buddha. Ambedkar had embraced Buddhism later. Rohith's mother and brother did so today.
Asked why Chandrababu Naidu was silent on the Rohith row, Babu said: "We have categorically condemned the University of Hyderabad incidents. On behalf of the (ruling) Telugu Desam Party, we offered Rs 5 lakh. From the government's side, we offered contract jobs to his mother and brother."
Chandrababu Naidu had a slip of tongue recently when he reportedly said that "no downtrodden would prefer to be born as such". Both states have a considerable presence of Dalits.
