Bhumana fumes at Naidu over Christian tag, calls it unacceptable

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Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) trust board’s former Chairman and YSRCP leader Bhumana Karunakar Reddy has taken serious exception to Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu according the Christian tag to him and called it unacceptable.

The Chief Minister, during his address in a debate on the ghee adulteration issue in the Assembly on Tuesday, accused the YSRCP leaders of having indulged in ‘deliberately blasphemous acts’ to cause sacrilege to the Lord Venkateswara temple.

In this connection, he referred to Mr. Karunakar Reddy as a Christian, showing photos of him performing his daughter’s wedding at a church.

Addressing the media in Tirupati later, Mr. Reddy insisted that the wedding was performed according to Hindu rituals and amid the chanting of Vedic hymns. “As the bride’s father, I had merely attended the church to witness a similar ritual performed by the groom’s side,” he said.

He also showed photos of Mr. Naidu sharing the dais with pastors and carrying the Bible in his hand, understandably during Christmas celebrations. He also showed photos of HRD Minister Nara Lokesh wearing a skull cap, symbolising an Iftar party hosted during Ramzan.

“Can we construe that they are Christians and Muslims just because of their attire?”, he shot back and urged the ruling dispensation to stop blindly making ‘religious tags’.

The YSRCP leader suspected that the Assembly debate was a pretext to get him and Y.V. Subba Reddy, his predecessor in the TTD trust board, arrested on some ‘frivolous reasons’.