Nandigama MLA cremated

• Naidu, TD leaders pay tributes
• Partymen in Krishna mourn Tangirala’s death
• Second MLA who died in Krishna before taking oath
• In 1999 Raavi Hari Gopal of Gudivada died

Nandigama (Krishna): The mortal remains of Telugu Desam legislator-elect Tangirala Prabhakara Rao who died of cardiac arrest late on Sunday night were consigned to flames in his native village Paritala on Monday.

He was 64. He is survived by two daughters and a son. Prabhakara Rao was two-time MLA from Nandigama constituency. He was the second legislator-elect from Krishna district to have died before taking oath. It was TD leader Raavi Hari Gopal, who had won from Gudivada Assembly segment but died in a road accident even before taking oath in 1999.

Prabhakara Rao was first elected to the Assembly in the 2009 when the segment was reserved for the Scheduled Castes as part of the reorganisation of constituencies.

The MLA had spent the whole day on Sunday touring the Pulichintala Project site along with Minister for Irrigation Devineni Umamaheswara Rao and had returned home only in the night. He was a diabetic and hypertension patient and was under medication. After his dinner, he went to bed along with his son and an hour later had complained of chest pain. His son alerted the family members and the party leaders who have rushed him to the local Mother Teresa Hospital, where he was declared ‘brought dead’.

Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu visited Prabhakara Rao’s body and paid rich tributes. He said the sudden death of Prabhakara Rao was a great loss to the party. He conveyed his sympathies to the members of the bereaved family.

The TD leaders, including Minister Umamaheswara Rao, MP Kesineni Srinivas, MLAs Mandali Buddha Prasad, Sriram Rajagopal, Bonda Umamaheswara Rao, former MP, Yarlagadda Lakshmi Prasad, former Home Minister Vasantha Nageswara Rao, former minister Nettem Raghuram, party general secretary Varla Ramaiah and a number of senior leaders visited Prabhakara Rao’s body and paid tributes.

A post-graduate in Law, Prabhakara Rao started his career as an advocate at Nandigama and became the president of the local Bar Association for three consecutive terms. He had been closely associated with the Telugu Desam right from its inception and was a staunch follower of former minister Devineni Venkata Ramana and later Umamaheswara Rao. Born in 1950 in Paritala village, Prabhakara Rao was first elected to the Kanchikacharla Mandal Parishad and later to the Zilla Parishad.

Being in politics for more than three decades, Prabhakara Rao continued to be non-controversial and non-corrupt till his death.