TDP leaders offer Pongallu to Gangamma during protest

TDP leaders perform prayers by offering Pongallu to Gangamma Thalli during their relay hunger strike in Tirupati on Sunday.

Telugu Desam Party (TDP) leaders, who are on a relay hunger strike to protest against the ‘illegal’ arrest of their party President N. Chandrababu Naidu, resorted to a ‘novel’ demonstration by offering Pongallu to Goddess Gangamma Thalli on Sunday.

The 29^th day of the protest at the party office marked the presence of more women protesters at the camp, who arranged seven bricks as the Gangamma Thalli. Rice and pulses cooked in pots were offered to the Goddess. Leading the demonstration, former MLA M. Sugunamma said the idea was to invoke a ‘divine intervention’ and drive sense into the ‘authoritarian’ YSRCP government.

TUDA former Chairman and Tirupati parliamentary constituency in-charge G. Narasimha Yadav, MCT corporator R.C. Munikrishna and city TDP President D. Bhaskar Yadav demanded the CID to produce evidence in support of the charges made against their leader or retract the case. They hoped that Mr. Naidu would walk unscathed out of the slew of cases ‘deliberately slapped against him in a vindictive manner’.