Vijayawada: Vijayawada City is set to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee (75th year) of the installation of the idol of ‘Harikatha Pitamaha’ Ajjada Adhibhatla Narayanadas.

A week-long series of Harikatha renditions will be held from August 16 to August 22, to commemorate the occasion.

The idol of Narayanadas was installed on January 25, 1951, by his prime disciple, the late Neti Lakshminarayana Bhagavatulu, at the Sivalayam Temple premises near Sivaji Cafe Centre in Satyanarayanapuram.

The celebrations were organised by the Das Sishya Prasishya Sangham in collaboration with Annamayya Parivaram (Hyderabad), Rajyalakshmi, Sankaranarayana (Planjery Foundation, Hyderabad), and Aswini Subbarao will take place at the Sri Sitarama Kalyana Mandapam here.

Eminent Harikatha artistes will perform daily at 9:30 am and again in the evening from 4:30 pm.

On August 20, the day will be dedicated to the memory of Narayanadas’s prime disciple, the late ‘Harikatha Kesari’ Neti Lakshminarayana Bhagavatar. In the evening, SV Sriram Bhattar Bhagavatulu (Hyderabad) will be honoured with the Neti Lakshminarayana Memorial Award by the Neti family and Annamayya Parivaramu.

In memory of their parents and in-laws, Rajyalakshmi and Sankaranarayana Planjery will present awards of Rs 25,000 each to two distinguished Haridas: Dhulipala Sivaramakrishna Sarma Bhagavatar (Guntur) and Ch Bhavani Bai (Nellore). On August 22, the final day of the celebrations will mark the 161st Jayanthi of Narayanadas. Kalla Nirmala (Vizianagaram) will be presented with the Narayanadas Memorial Award by the Das Sishya Prasishya Sangham, Annamayya Parivaramu, and others.

The conveners of the programme, Burra Padmanabha Sarma Bhagavatulu and Yanamandra Venkata Krishnaiah (Founder of Annamayya Parivaram), appealed to devotees to attend the programmes.