It has been exactly 41 years ago that the Nityannadanam scheme (daily free food supply to pilgrims) was launched on Tirumala hills; and an interesting debate has taken place on social media as who should get credit for introducing the scheme.
Telugu Desam Party president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu posted a message on social media platform X, giving the credit to his father-in-law and former chief minister N T Rama Rao for launching the scheme.
In his post, Chandrababu Naidu recalled that the scheme was launched on April 6, 1985, and said it had grown from serving just 2,000 devotees initially to feeding lakhs of pilgrims today.
He described the initiative as a landmark service in the tradition of annadanam at Tirumala.
However, social activisit Bolisetty Satyanarayana, who recently came out of the Jana Sena Party said that the credit should go to a donor Lakkishetti Venkata Ramaiah (L V Ramaiah) as Annadanam scheme was his brainchild.
“While the chief minister has highlighted the achievements of the scheme, he had failed to mention the “real force” behind its conception — L V Ramaiah,” Bolisetty Satyanarayana said in response to Naidu’s tweet.
Satyanarayana said the post created the impression that the entire credit for the annaprasadam programme belonged solely to the late NTR, which was “unfortunate.”
He claimed that in 1985, after being moved by the hardships faced by devotees at Tirumala, L V Ramaiah conceptualised the scheme with the blessings of the Kanchi seer, and then persuaded the then chief minister NTR to implement it.
He further said Ramaiah had made a major personal contribution toward the launch of the scheme.
According to him, Ramaiah donated Rs 10 lakh from his own funds at the time — an amount he claimed would be worth nearly Rs 8 crore today — and laid the foundation for the initiative.
Satyanarayana said that while administrators and institutions deserved recognition for sustaining the programme, it was equally important not to erase the role of the donor who gave it life.
He appealed to the government to formally acknowledge Ramaiah’s contribution and requested that his remarks not be misunderstood.
Earlier, Naidu noted that what began as a food distribution programme for 2,000 devotees had now expanded to provide annaprasadam to about 2.8 lakh pilgrims every day.
He also said that with the support and participation of devotees, the corpus of the Sri Venkateswara Annaprasadam Trust had crossed Rs 2,500 crore.