Pawan on backfoot after ‘Varahi’ colour row

C Pradeep Kumar
Vijayawada

Controversy over the colour of the election campaign vehicle ‘Varahi’ has forced the actor-turned-politician and Jana Sena Party (JSP) chief Pawan Kalyan to be on the backfoot after trying to put up a brave front over the olive green colour.

On the other hand, the YSRC leaders and cadre are raising serious objections to the olive green colour used by Pawan for his campaign vehicle, and the Transport department authorities have questioned the modifications done in the vehicle without permission to convert it into a sort of “army vehicle.”

Several Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders have also reportedly told Pawan Kalyan that he should not have used the olive green colour, as it violates Section 121 of the Motor Vehicle Act, which says “no motor vehicles shall be painted in olive green colour except those belonging to the Defence department”.

Some netizens even gave him sarcastic advice that he should immediately change the colour of “Varahi’ from olive green to “yellow” so that it could be used both by Pawan Kalyan as well as his ‘adopted father’. On Friday, Pawan made a sarcastic tweet saying whether “YCP will allow wearing at least an olive-green shirt.” He alleged that they first created hurdles for the release of his film, later stopped his vehicle to come out of the airport in Visakhapatnam; and later restricted him to a hotel room. “They forced me to leave Visakhapatnam. At Mangalagiri, they did not even allow my car to come out and for me to walk down to Ippatam. Now, they are making a controversy over the colour of Varahi. Okay, what next? Should I stop breathing fresh air?” he asked.

Yet, sources said Pawan might be compelled to make changes in ‘Varahi’ as per the rules, as some people are planning to move the court to prevent him from using the vehicle with such a colour.

For a person standing in the position of party chief, one has to be mindful while tweeting something, but Pawan Kalyan seems to be completely unaware of what he is doing. He is just jumping to conclusions and trying to play to the gallery with his tweets but he is ending up writing some nonsense. Freshly he tweeted the picture of an olive green car and mentioned, “Rules are for Pawan Kalyan only”.

But the irony is that the steering wheel of the car is on the left side which means that it doesn’t belong to India. He failed to do such basic research before uploading. He also posted a picture of an olive-coloured bike which has no registered number. The identity and origin of that bike are unknown. On the whole, Pawan Kalyan is proving himself wrong time and again with his emotional childlike tweets of elementary school standards.