Nara Chandrababu Naidu (Telugu: నారాచంద్రబాబునాయుడు) (born April 20, 1950) was the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh from 1995 to 2004.[1] He is also the founder of Heritage Foods. As of August 2009, he is leader of the opposition in the Andhra Pradesh state assembly, and the president of Telugu Desam Party (TDP).
He was the youngest Minister in the Cabinet in Congress. Naidu took over the post of Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh from his father-in-law N. T. Rama Rao in a political coup on September 1, 1995.
During his tenure as chief minister there were allegations of favoritism shown to Reliance Industries(Reliance Energy is India’s largest integrated private sector power utility company) in exchange for kick backs
HERITAGE FOODS
The Founder Chairman /Heritage Foods ( India ) Limited, India
Sri Chandra Babu Naidu is one of the greatest Dynamic, Pragmatic, Progressive and Visionary Leaders of the 21 st Century.
With an objective of "Bringing prosperity into the rural families through co-operative efforts", he along with a few like minded, friends and associates promoted "Heritage Foods" in the year 1992 taking opportunity from the Industrial Policy, 1991 of Government of India and he has been successful in his endeavour. At present, Heritage has market presence in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Maharastra. More than three thousand villages and three lakh farmers are being benefited in these states. On the other side, Heritage is serving millions of customers needs, employing more than 3500 employees and generating indirect employment opportunities to more than 10000 people. Beginning with a humble annual turnover of Rs.4.38 crores in 1993-94, the sales turnover has reached close to Rs.350 crores during the financial year 2006-2007.
Sri Chandra Babu Naidu was born on April 20, 1951 in NaravaripallyVillage ,Chittoor District, Andhra Pradesh , India . His late father Sri N. Kharjura Naidu was an agriculturist and his latemother Smt. Ammanamma was a housewife. Mr. Naidu had his school education in Chandragiri and his college education at the Sri Venkateswara Arts College ,Tirupati. He did his Masters in Economics from the Sri VenkateswaraUniversity ,Tirupati. Sri Naidu is married to Ms. Bhuvaneswari D/o Sri N T Rama Rao, Ex-Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh and famous Star of Telugu Cinema. Mrs. N Bhuvaneswari is presently the Vice Chairman & Managing Director of Heritage Foods ( India ) Limited.
Mr. Naidu held various positions of office in his college and organised a number of social activities. Following the 1977 cyclone, which devastated Diviseemataluk of Krishna district, he actively organised donations and relief material from Chittoor district for the cyclone victims. Mr. Naidu has been evincing keen interest in rural development activities in general and the upliftment of the poor and downtrodden sections of society in particular.
Sri Naidu held various coveted and honourable positions including Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Minister for Finance& Revenue, Minister for Archives & Cinematography, Member of the A.P. Legislative Assembly, Director of A.P. Small Industries Development Corporation, and Chairman of KarshakaParishad.
Sri Naidu has won numerous awards including " Member of the World Economic Forum's Dream Cabinet" (Time Asia ), "South Asian of the Year " (Time Asia ), " Business Person of the Year " (Economic Times), and " IT Indian of the Millennium " ( India Today).
Sri Naidu was chosen as one of 50 leaders at the forefront of change in the year 2000 by the Business Week magazine for being an unflinching proponent of technology and for his drive to transform the State of Andhra Pradesh .
Politicians shining: Netas' assets soar
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NEW DELHI: You may not be able to say this about India, but its politicians are certainly shining. Check out the assets declared by candidates in this year's election so far and compare it to what was declared by them in the last election, and you will find a quantum jump in their wealth. In certain cases, the figure has risen by as much as a mind-numbing 3000%.
The richest candidate so far, going by assets declared, is LagadapatiRajagopal, the owner of power generation and infrastructure company Lanco, and the Congress candidate from Vijayawada. He has shown assets worth
Rs 299 crore. In 2004, he had declared assets worth just
Rs 9.6 crore. In other words, during the five-year UPA rule, his assets went up 30 times or by almost 3000%.
And Rajagopal isn't the only politician whose wealth has grown. It's a general trend. There are many more who have bigger assets than the Rs 67 crore declared by D K Adikesavulu, the richest MP in the last election.
Samajwadi Party's Abu Azmi, for instance, on Monday declared his assets are worth Rs 124 crore while filing his nomination from Mumbai North-West.
Then there's Karan Singh Tanwar, BSP's candidate from South Delhi. He hasn't filed his nomination so far, but he had declared his assets while filing his nomination for the recently held Delhi assembly election - it was Rs 150 crore.
A lot of political fat cats come from Andhra Pradesh. Chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy might have assets worth just Rs 1.35 crore, but his son, Y S Jaganmohan Reddy is much richer - he has declared assets worth Rs 77 crore.
Telugu film star Chiranjeevi, who has floated his own party, PrajaRajyam, has declared assets worth Rs 88 crore, and TDP leader N Chandrababu Naidu has declared his wealth at Rs 68 crore. YSR acolyte V Balasoury has shown assets worth Rs 45 crore.
Businessman-turned-politician, civil aviation minister Praful Patel has declared assets worth Rs 74 crore. And the man who pioneered low-cost airlines under Patel's watch, Capt Gopinath, has shown assets worth just a shade less - Rs 73.46 crore.
SharadPawar's assets are worth Rs 8 crore but daughter SupriyaSule has declared assets worth Rs 53 crore, just Rs 2 crore less than filmmaker and LJP candidate PrakashJha, who has shown assets worth Rs 55 crore.
If Rajagopal's assets have grown dramatically in the last five years, so have those of lottery king Mani Kumar Subba. In the last election, he had shown assets worth Rs 18 crore. This time he has declared that he owns assets worth Rs 60 crore - a three-fold or a 300% jump. Interestingly, Subba's LIC policies alone are worth Rs 100 crore for which he has paid a premium of Rs 1.17 crore.
Compared to these worthies, the wealth of our former maharajas looks small. JyotiradityaScindia's declared assets, for instance, are less than Rs 14 crore.
Interestingly, UPA chief Sonia Gandhi's assets amount to about Rs 1.38 crore.
ASSASINATION ATTEMPT
EXTREMISM
A blast and its shock
S. NAGESH KUMAR
in Hyderabad
ANDHRA PRADESHChief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu has survived the most concerted attempt yet by the People's War (P.W.) to assassinate him. On October 1, P.W. activists triggered a series of nine powerful Claymore mines, which they are suspected to have planted over a period of time on the ghat road leading to the Tirumala hills from Tirupati, barely minutes after the Chief Minister's convoy had crossed the Alipiri toll gate downhill at 4-12 p.m.
N. Chandrababu Naidu escorted by a security officer after he was rescued from his mangled car.
The impact of the blast was so intense that Chandrababu Naidu's bulletproof car was hurled into the air and landed on its side. Security personnel extricated the dazed and injured Chief Minister from the mangled car in which he was seated beside the driver. Minister for Information Technology B. Gopalakrishna Reddy, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) from Tirupati and Puttur, Chadalavada Krishnamurthy and R. Rajasekhara Reddy respectively, all seriously wounded, and the driver were also helped out of the wreckage and rushed to hospitals in Tirupati.
A look at the scene of the attempted assassination left no one in doubt that the Chief Minister had a miraculous escape. Had the bulletproof window of the car given way, the shrapnel from the mines would have caused him far more serious injuries than just a fractured collarbone. Rajasekhara Reddy, who was seated in the rear seat which the Chief Security Officer P. Umapathi was asked to vacate, seems to have borne the brunt of the blast, and is still battling for life.
The Chief Minister, who lost consciousness for a full two minutes after the blast and remained dazed for several hours later, said, "My initial reaction was that the car was involved in an accident and had veered off the road. But, if you look at the scene of the blast, it is difficult to believe that anyone could have survived. I am alive today owing to the good wishes of the people and the benign blessings of Venkateswara (the presiding deity at the Tirumala-Tirupati temple)."
Security personnel trying to heave Chandrababu Naidu's car, which fell on its side after being hurled in the air by the blast.
Several leaders, including President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, and Karnataka Chief Minister S. M. Krishna, called on Chandrababu Naidu in Hyderabad soon after he returned from Tirupati.
The explosions have exposed grave lapses in the personal security of Chandrababu Naidu, a leader in the `Z' plus threat category. Apparently the police had not learnt their lessons from an earlier attempt on him in 1998 when P.W. cadres placed Claymore mines in a bullock cart alongside a road on which he was to travel during an Assembly byelection campaign in Karimnagar district. The mines were detected in time but the naxalites triggered them by remote control, injuring the constables present on the spot.
The gaping holes in the security were evident from the failure of the Deep Search Metal Detector (DSMD) to reveal the Claymores although the route had been `sanitised' before the VIP's arrival. Routine precautions, such as using an electronic jammer and using a convoy of identical cars bearing identical registration numbers to confuse would-be assassins were not followed. The Centre had offered Chandrababu Naidu NSG cover but he turned it down presumably because its security code would restrict his access to the people.
The mangled car.
It was no wonder then that heads began to roll after the incident: Chittoor Superintendent of Police NavinChand was suspended and the District Collector and Anantapur Range Deputy Inspector-General of Police were transferred. Other standard measures followed were the appointment of a Special Investigation Team headed by D.T. Naik, for an in-depth probe into the blast and a Commission of Inquiry headed by former Uttar Pradesh Director-General of Police Prakash Singh to study the existing security systems.
Speculations about the identity of the assassins were immediately cleared when the P.W. issued a statement claiming responsibility for the attack. Secretary of the State Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Committee of the People's War, Ramakrishna, and others justified the attack saying, "Chandrababu Naidu and the State police are enemies of the people. They deserve to be eliminated."
The P.W.'s admission was not surprising since it had issued death warrants against Chandrababu Naidu, West Bengal Chief Minister BuddhadebBhattacharjee, and former Jharkhand Chief Minister BabulalMarandi.
APART from creating fear among political leaders about their personal safety, the attack also served to forge a new kind of solidarity among them. Chandrababu Naidu's arch-rival and Congress(I) Legislature Party leader Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy rushed to Tirupati to call on the Chief Minister soon after the incident. He even staged a dharna in the temple town to protest against the failure of the security apparatus.
AFP
Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani with Chandrababu Naidu in Hyderabad two days after the assassination attempt.
Political parties have always been wary of openly criticising the P.W.'s policy of eliminating its so-called enemies, for fear of attracting its wrath. With the P.W. attacking the party'snumerouno, the TDP has come out rather strongly saying that the naxaliteorganisation had no moral right to speak of people's problems after killing innocent people. While the government was not against anyone, it would hit back at forces that attacked innocent people or destroyed public property, the party said.
The attack has thrown up some disturbing questions, beginning with the image of the State police. Rajasekhara Reddy's dharna helped underscore the point that the State bureaucracy had become complacent. This laxity may be in no small measure owing to Chandrababu Naidu's reluctance to wield the stick against some Indian Administrative Service and Indian Police Service officers when the situation demanded.
No action was taken against persons responsible for the security of Panchayati Raj Minister A. Madhav Reddy, who was assassinated by naxalites in a landmine blast in 2000. Madhav Reddy was high on the P.W.'s hitlist for his outspokenness on the issue of naxal violence when he was Home Minister. He was allowed to switch his vehicles in a very casual manner on the night of his murder.
A Claymore mine of the People's War seized by the police during an operation. The 'box' weighing about 5 kg is filled with blasting gelatin. A bigger version of this was used in the October 1 explosion.
It was on the strong insistence of some Ministers that the Chittoor S.P. has now been suspended. Ironically, security expert S. Subramanyam, a former NSG chief, appointed to inquire into the security aspects, stated that there was no security failure since security was a "mind game not related to weapons". He said the improvised explosive device (IED) used in this case was unsophisticated and could be prepared even in a kitchen. "There are certain things beyond one's control," he said.
But control was one thing that the Chandrababu Naidu government had lost over the bureaucracy and the police. The Chief Minister speaks to District Collectors and S.Ps directly during his weekly videoconferences and takes decisions bypassing Ministers, thus undermining their authority. While he reviews the activity of other departments through performance indicators, the police never seem to come up for scrutiny publicly.
An illustration of the influence wielded by the police bureaucracy in policy making was the abortive talks with the P.W.'s emissaries, VaravaraRao and Gaddar, last year. Some members of the police top brass were accused of scuttling the peace process. In their line of thinking, any attempt to declare a ceasefire in the absence of the P.W.'s willingness to abjure violence would be disastrous. This contentious formulation at the preliminary stage of the talks left no scope for any forward movement.
K. RAMESH BABU
A security officer carries pieces of wire that were disconnected from unexploded Claymore mines in Tirupati.
Moreover, the militarisation of the police has become a cause for concern. A glaring instance was the shooting down of A.P. Civil Liberties Committee (APCLC) leader Ramanathan in September 1985 after naxalites killed an Inspector, Yadigiri Reddy, at the Kazipet railway station. Retributive violence has become commonplace with the police but this "an eye for an eye" policy has never found acceptance among the intelligentsia though expressions in its support are aired in street-talk whenever naxalites attack a popular leader.
The APCLC claims to have catalogued nearly 4,000 deaths at the hands of the police since the naxalite movement began in 1968. Half of these occurred during the past eight years. Figures from other sources show that 5,639 people have died in left-wing extremist violence during the past 35 years. They include 2,504 extremists, 2,616 civilians and 519 security personnel.
Reports frequently appear in the local media about the involvement of police officers in various illegal deals through surrendered naxalites, sullying the department's image. KattulaSammaiah, a former P.W. activist, died while being smuggled out of India on a fake passport. He was reportedly accompanied by the son of a top police official.
An unexploded mine found in a bush near the blast site.
The attack on Chandrababu Naidu has come at a time when the credibility of the police set-up is at a low in the wake of the multi-crore fake stamp paper scandal in which a TDP MLA, C. Krishna Yadav, was arrested. During the recently concluded Assembly session, Opposition members highlighted how senior police officers sought to shield the prime accused, Abdul Kareem Telgi, and allowed him to escape.
The explosion has served to deflect public attention from the stamp paper scam and provided relief to those TDP leaders who were threatened to be engulfed by it.
For now the landmine explosion has generated a wave of sympathy for the TDP supremo.
Top Naxalite ‘behind Naidu attack’ shot
In a jolt to Naxalites in Andhra Pradesh, the Warangal police on Sunday morning shot two top Maoist leaders, including P Sudhakar Reddy alias Shrikanth, who is alleged to have been involved in the 2003 bid on the life of then chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu and the killing of former home minister N Madhav Reddy.