A leader committed to service of Bharat

Venkaiah Garu and I have been associated with each other for decades. We have worked together and I have also learnt a lot from him. If there is one thing that has remained common in his life, it is his love of people. His brush with activism and politics began in Andhra Pradesh as a student leader.

Considering his talent, oratory and organisational skills, he would have been welcomed by any political party but he preferred to work with the Sangh Parivar because he was inspired by the vision of Nation First. He was associated with the RSS, and ABVP and then strengthened the Jana Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

When the Emergency was imposed almost 50 years ago, young Venkaiah Garu immersed himself in the anti-Emergency movement. He was imprisoned and that too for inviting Loknayak Jayaprakash Narayan to Andhra Pradesh. This commitment to democracy would be seen time and again in his political career. In the mid-1980s, when the great NT Rama Rao’s government was unceremoniously dismissed by the Congress, he was at the forefront of the movement to protect democratic principles.