MP with American accent who opened attack on Modi govt

BENGALURU: Usually when a no-confidence motion is moved, the party initiating it fields somebody very senior to attack the government of the day. So most people outside the Telugu speaking states were surprised when the TDP fielded a virtually unknown first time MP, to lay out its case. Those who tuned into TVs would also have been surprised at the strong American accent with which this MP put up a barrage of charges against the government.

For observers of Andhra politics, though, the speaker, 52-yearold Jayadev Galla, was no stranger. They also would not have been surprised that N Chandrababu Naidu chose him to lead the party’s attack in Parliament. While Galla might be a first time MP from Guntur, he has an impressive lineage.

Galla’s maternal grandfather Paturi Rajagopala Naidu was a freedom fighter, and, more importantly, the political mentor of Naidu. Both Rajagopala, affectionately called Rajanna, and Naidu belong to Andhra’s Chittor. Rajagopala was himself twice an MP, having won on the Swatantra Party ticket. Along with Prof NG Ranga, it was Rajanna who originally helped build the Swatantra party against Congress dominance in the state, but he eventually joined hands with the Congress.

While his political successor was his daughter Aruna Kumari, Rajanna was quick to see the leadership potential of Naidu and helped groom him to not only become an MLA but also one of the ministers in the Congress cabinet of Tanguturi Anjaiah. Naidu never forgot that , even though he later left the Congress to join the TDP party started by his father-in-law.

Aruna Kumari, who, by then, was married to Ramchandra Naidu Galla — an NRI who had returned to set up Amar Raja Batteries — went onto become a three-time MLA from Chandragiri. Aruna became a minister in several Congress governments in undivided Andhra. After Andhra’s division and the decimation of the Congress in the state, Aruna joined TDP before the 2014 elections. Though Aruna was defeated, her son Jayadev Galla, who was largely educated abroad, contested from Guntur on a TDP ticket, and won easily. Thus it was not a surprise to AP political observers that Chandra Babu decided to field the suave, well-educated Galla to present the state’s case.

Galla, while speaking, referred to Tollywood movie Bharat Ane Nenu and how the protagonist, an NRI who returns to India, always remembers that a “promise is a promise”. Interestingly, the movie’s hero , Mahesh Babu, is his brother-in-law.