Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao on Thursday entered his new official residence, reported to be the biggest and most expensive residence of any chief minister in the country.
The complex named "Pragathi Bhavan" consists of the CM's residence, office, conference hall and the two existing buildings.
The chief minister, who is also a strong believer in ‘Vastu’, had demolished an existing IAS officers’ association building at the spot, for his new vastu compliant home.
While much has been reported about his belief in superstition, another incident that the chief minister drew a lot of flak for, was the 'inauguration' of his seat.
A video which surfaced on social media, shows KCR insisting that a 'godman' sit on the CM's chair at his new office, even as cameras flashed in the background.
Following this, KCR takes the blessings of the 'godman' and only then takes his seat.
Watch the video here.
Interestingly #Telangana CM KCR insisted that the seer Chinna Jeeyar sit on the CM's chair first, took his blessings and then sat himself pic.twitter.com/Fne3bqJkp7
— T S Sudhir (@Iamtssudhir) November 24, 2016
The 'godman' in the video is Sri Tridandi Srimannarayana Ramanuja Chinna Jeeyar Swamiji, more popularly known as 'Chinna Jeeyar,' a Vedic pontiff and a preacher of Vaishnavism.
However, his story is not one without controversy.
India Today reported that the 'tech swami,' was the son of an ayurved and was an atheist, who was inspired by Marxist ideology.
Besides running science and technology colleges and running 13 centres in the US, he wields influence among politicians and businessmen, the report added.
The same report quotes him as saying "Earthquakes and tsunamis are symptomatic of the pain that we are causing to the Mother Earth."
However, that is not the only unscientific statement he has made.
In 2012, he was hosted by IIT-Madras for a lecture.
During the course of his talk, Chinna Jeeyar made statements like “Who were our ancestors? Monkeys, apes, right? We are the children of apes, right?”
He then went on to 'disprove' this theory, claiming that no one's parents would be liked to be called 'monkeys', and then said that evolution was not proven. He also hinted at Darwin being an ape himself.
“We are children of God," he proclaimed, amid applause.
In the same speech, he also spoke about his views on geography.
Apparently, men who wrote the Puranas knew how the earth looked, they described it as, “a rabbit trying to catch hold of a bush in front of it”, he said.
How does he prove his point? He turns the world map upside down and there lies the 'proof'.
Don't believe us? A video of the speech can be seen here.
According to reports, Chinna Jeeyar has been the philosophical adviser to KCR for the past 30 years.
He is also said to have an ashram at Muchintal in Shamshabad, and made his previous public affiliation to the Telangana government when he was formally invited for the Godavari Pushkarams, held earlier this year.
KCR has also publicly stated that Chinna Jeeyar was a 'blessing', even as Telangana and Andhra governor ESL Narasimhan and Union Ministers Venkaiah Naidu and Bandaru Dattatreya shared a stage with him.