That is the height of Shankar Rao’s ‘Goddess Sonia’ statue, depicting her as ‘Telangana Talli’ (Telangana mother) as a thank-you for the Centre’s decision to create a Telangana state. It will be installed at what Dr Rao intends to call the ‘Sonia Gandhi Shanti Vanam’, in a patch of land near the Bangalore-Hyderabad highway registered in his daughter Sushmitha’s name.
‘I want to build the temple so that people can offer prayers to Sonia Gandhi every day for ending the dominance of Seemandhra leadership over Telangana. I am donating nine acres of my own land and with my own money’’ says Dr Rao. ‘It is not sycophancy. I am a core loyalist of the Nehru-Gandhi family. The Congress gave me a ticket to contest polls seven times and I became a minister twice.’
‘I want to build the temple so that people can offer prayers to Sonia Gandhi every day for ending the dominance of Seemandhra leadership over Telangana. I am donating nine acres of my own land and with my own money’’ says Dr Rao. ‘It is not sycophancy. I am a core loyalist of the Nehru-Gandhi family. The Congress gave me a ticket to contest polls seven times and I became a minister twice.’