The House That NTR Died In

…will see the eviction of his widow after a long legal battle

It’s one of the arresting images of the mid-90s. A well built feisty middle-aged lady stands next to a frail NT Rama Rao, actor and former Andhra Pradesh
Chief Minister. The location is a 11,000 sq ft, double-storeyed house at Banjara Hills, Road No. 11. It was here that Lakshmi Parvati, who came into NTR’s life as a biographer and became his second wife in 1992, took care of him in his fading years after he lost his self-made fortune of a lifetime.

In 1992-93, it was from this house that NTR, in the opposition then, waged a battle for prohibition in support of women’s organisations. This is where they had married. And it was from here that NTR returned to power in 1994 with a landslide of 200 seats. But within a year he had lost both his party and chief ministership in a coup staged by his son-in-law Chandrababu Naidu. It was to this house that NTR returned then. And he died a forlorn and lonely death here in 1996.

But the house continued to be in the news. It was here that Lakshmi Parvati desperately clung on to NTR’s legacy with a party named TDP-LP (Lakshmi Parvati). It had 50-odd MLAs, all of whom left her and joined Naidu until she too, like her husband, was all alone.

But the irony is that the house is not really NTR’s. He had willed it to his youngest daughter, Uma Maheshwari. When Naidu usurped the chief ministership, Maheshwari, who lived abroad, told her father to live in the house as long as he wished. After NTR’s death, Maheshwari gave power of attorney to her brothers, Harikrishna and Balakrishna. They approached the courts to evict Lakshmi Parvati. After 15 years of protracted litigation, the Andhra Pradesh High Court recently decided that the house should go to Maheswari.

In doing so, it upheld an earlier judgment of a city civil court and observed that the family had never accepted Lakshmi Parvati as one among them and fought with her about NTR’s possessions, including the party he founded. The court has now given her two months to vacate the house.

Lakshmi Parvati, now 56, says, “I don’t know why my children are now after this property though their father had given several such assets to them.”

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Anil Budur Lulla