PIL challenges appointment of TDP leaders on Tirupati board

The Hyderabad high court on Monday admitted a public interest litigation petition challenging the appointment of senior Telugu Desam Party leader Putta Sudhakar Yadav and MLA Vangalapudi Anitha in the Tirumala Tirupati Devastanams (TTD) trust board as chairman and member respectively.

T Omkar, president of Hindu Chaitanya Samithi of Chittoor district, and two others who filed the PIL argued that Yadav and Anitha had connections with Christianity. The petition argued that their appointment to TTD, which manages the country’s richest Hindu shrine of Lord Venkateshwara, would hurt Hindu sentiments.

Controversy over Anitha’s Christian connections surfaced within hours of her appointment. A video clipping of an interview given by the MLA to a women’s television channel disclosing her Christian faith has gone viral on social media.

In the interview, Anitha was heard saying that though she was married to a Hindu, she was basically a Christian. “I am a Christian. I always carry a Bible in my bag and also in my car. I don’t go out without the Bible,” she told the channel.

Soon after the video clipping was brought to his notice, chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu ordered an inquiry and asked officials to withhold her appointment. However, even before any action was taken, Anitha herself sent a letter to Naidu on Saturday evening asking him to cancel her recent appointment as a member of the TTD trust board.

On the other hand, Yadav’s appointment was mired in controversy since his name was proposed as TTD chairman in September last itself. Some Hindu groups raised a strong objection saying Yadav was closely associated with Christian associations and that he had attended many Christian evangelical meetings.

HYDERABAD: