Dressed in a white shirt and white veshti, with a yellow shawl around his shoulders, and sporting dark glasses, TDP MP Siva Prasad donned a new avatar on Friday before the winter session of Parliament. But it wasn’t just any new get-up, the Chittoor MP turned himself into late DMK leader and former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, M Karunanidhi. From imitating his mannerisms to the way the late DMK President spoke and even being wheeled into the Parliament, Siva Prasad went all out to look like Karunanidhi.
It was part of the numerous protests that he had his party colleagues have undertaken over perceived injustices meted out to the state by the Centre not honouring the promises made in the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act 2014. The TDP pulled out of the NDA in March this year after the Centre failed to grant Andhra special category status.
Speaking to the media outside Parliament, Prasad accused PM Modi of not delivering the dharma of friendship. “If you are friends, you should be like Karna ('Mahabharata' character). He (Modi) has made friends with Chandrababu Naidu and cheated him, he has changed his words after promising things. If one rules, one should rule like Satyaharishchandra -truthfully.”
TDP MPs Ashok Gajapati Raju, Jayadev Galla, Maganti Murali Mohan, K Rammohan Naidu have also joined in the protest along with him and raised slogans demanding Special Category Status (SCS).
Siva Prasad, however, has taken to a unique and very often bizarre form to protest. Taking on different avatars to register his protest in Parliament, the TDP MP has dressed up as Lord Krishna, Mahatma Gandhi, Narada, Santa Claus, a snake charmer, Harikatha (folk art form) artist and several others.
It was in 2013-14 when he first shot to the limelight, protesting against the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh. While he flogged himself outside Parliament on one occasion to express his anger over the bifurcation, in another instance in 2014 he dressed up as Lord Krishna and went on to approach the then UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi urging her not to divide the state.
Siva Prasad, a Telugu actor joined TDP in 1995 and went on to become the Information and Culture Minister in 1999. A two-time MP from Chittoor, he won in 2009 and 2014.