PVN Centenary: KCR thanks voters for electing the former PM's daughter as MLC

The year-long birth centenary celebrations of former Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao culminated on Monday with the unveiling of a 16 feet bronze statue of the son of the soil in Hyderabad.

The K Chandrasekhar Rao government had flagged off PVN Rao’s birth centenary events on 28 June 2020.

In the past year, Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao has demanded Bharat Ratna for the PM who ushered in the economic reforms, PVN's statue and portrait installed in Parliament premises and also asked for the Hyderabad Central University to be named after him.

Rao then went on to field Rao's daughter Surabhi Vani Devi as the TRS candidate to wrest the BJP held MLC seat in the Hyderabad graduate constituency polls earlier this year.

“I am grateful to the voters for electing Surabhi Devi whose name we had proposed for the MLC seat as part of our tributes to PV in his birth centenary year,” Rao said on Monday.

Rao along with Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan unveiled PVN state at Hussain Sagar's Necklace Road, which was also renamed after the late PM.

The chief minister lauded Rao for the land reforms in the state and standing as a model for other states. “His family gave up 800 acres of their land holdings for the public benefit,” Rao extolled PVN while also crediting him for introducing the residential education system like the Navodaya Vidyalayas.

“While running a minority government, PV brought in reforms that paved for the huge economic benefits – jobs, state budgets in Rs lakhs of crores. Former PM Manmohan Singh respects PV like a fatherly figure, his guru,” Rao, who served as a minister in UPA-1 said.

The chief minister said that PV Narasimha Rao chair would be established at the Kakatiya University in Warangal.

PVN was born on 28 June 1921 in Telangana (then Nizam’s Hyderabad state) and expired on 23 December 2004 in New Delhi. PV was chief minister of Andhra Pradesh from 1971 to 73. A Lok Sabha member of six terms, PV had served as a minister holding decisive portfolios like defence, external affairs, home at the centre