Bengaluru: What’s in a name? Well, you might say, “not much.”
But ask Andhra Pradesh CM Jagan Mohan Reddy and he would say “there’s much”!
On Monday, his government took a bold decision to rename Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Pratibha Puraskar Awards to 'YSR Vidya Puraskaras'.
Incidentally, these awards are given to secondary and higher secondary students on the day of the former President’s birthday. The day is also celebrated as National Education Day.
The name change comes keeping Jagan’s father YSR in mind.
Such a move has obviously been slammed by former Andhra Pradesh CM and TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu. He took to twitter and has termed the renaming as a 'shocking method of self-aggrandizement'. He also added that the YSR govt has insulted a venerated man like Dr. Kalam by renaming the award.
YSR has come in for a lot of criticism for taking controversial decisions in renaming many schemes. It has renamed TDP government schemes after Jagan’s father YSR.
He also renamed the NTR Vaidya Seva to YSR Arogyasri. The govt also renamed Anna NTR Canteen to Rajanna Canteen as people used to call YSR Rajanna.
Jagan has not limited himself to renaming schemes. He has taunted the media as well. His government passed an order earlier enabling the special commissioner, Information and Public Relations to lodge complaints and file defamation cases against publishers and editors.
Why this order?
It has been passed to take on false, baseless and defamatory news. The special commissioner was permitted to lodge appropriate complaints and cases under appropriate sections of law. The order included news items published/telecast in Print/electronic/social media.
This has been slammed by TDP and the Press Council as 'curbing press freedom'.