Visakhapatnam Sarada peetham pontiff Swamy Swaroopanandendra Saraswati appears to be more of a political guru, rather than a spiritual guru.
Whenever there is an occasion, this seer makes strong political comments like any other political leader, instead of preaching spiritual things to the people.
He praises some political leaders and attacks others as strong as any other political rival.
The way he has been pampering Telangana Rashtra Samithi president K Chandrasekhar Rao and YSR Congress party president Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy makes one wonder whether a saint should have attachments to material things.
Swaroopanandendra calls Jagan as his “pranam” (life) and KCR as his “aatma” (soul) only to gain benefits from them.
Because of his political connections, he got lands at cheaper rates from the governments – very recently, KCR allotted him two acres of land at a nominal price of Rs 1 per acre at Kokapet, where the land value is not less than Rs 20 crore per acre.
When Telugu Desam Party led by N Chandrababu Naidu was in power, Swaroopanandendra did not get this kind of patronage, as Naidu used to encourage high profile corporate spiritual leaders like Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Jaggi Vasudev, Baba Ramdev and Mata Amritanandamayi etc.
So, naturally, Swaroopanandendra treats Naidu as a political enemy. On Wednesday, too, he made sensation comments against the TDP chief.
He alleged that the TDP government had wasted public funds in the name of Jala Harathi, Pushkaralu, and other schemes.
Demanding that Naidu owed an explanation to the people, he said he would meet Jagan Mohan Reddy shortly and request him to order a probe into the misuse of public funds by Naidu.