    
Imac
Pilla Bewarse
Username: Imac
Post Number: 14
Registered: 04-2015
Posted From: 183.82.184.72
| | Posted on Saturday, April 18, 2015 - 11:39 pm: |
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nice oh they collaborated with german company grundig ! Oh my grandfather picowayne fav brand. once he sold his kidney to buy grundig cassette player
P.V. Rajeshwar Rao: Proximity breeds power
And a chance to rule companies
Rajeshwar Rao is courted by bureaucrats and politicians for various favoursOf his entire family, Rajeshwar Rao, 45, is the closest to Rao. It was at his tastefully-decorated, plushly-carpeted double-storeyed home in Adarsh Nagar, Hyderabad, that his father was planning to spend his retired life when the lure of Delhi beckoned. He is also the most controversial.
The proximity has helped him wield immense clout and gained for him a place on the directorial boards of several companies. Though not a full-time politician, he is also on the PCC(I)'S executive committee.
Being his father's son had started paying the law graduate rich dividends much earlier. The owners of the deeply-in-red Bhaskara Palace, a five-star hotel in Hyderabad, realised in 1988 that roping in Rajeshwar Rao would be the best remedy. They were right. The turnaround came through the generosity of Janardhan Poojary, then Union minister of state for finance.
Rajeshwar Rao also pulled off an ITDC tie-up. Rewarding him with a directorship was a small price to pay for the hotel, recently sold to industrialist Sanjay Dalmia. To criticism of this deal, he answered: "Dalmia is a friend of mine and there is nothing wrong in my getting involved in it."
This deal was followed by 10 other companies taking him on their boards - profitably. For example, the Kakatiya Cements Pvt Ltd enhanced its daily production from 250 tonnes to 600 tonnes. He also wangled a loan from a financial institution for the company.
Rajeshwar Rao is also in partnership with his wife's brother: they are agents for Hero Honda and stockists for the Pune-based Hindustan Antibiotics. It's all a long rise to the top for the Osmania University law graduate, who once worked for Allied Publishers in Madras.
As Rajeshwar Rao is said to have the prime minister's ear, bureacrats and businessmen court him. He receives them in his first floor drawing-room that is reserved for them. The lesser-types get an audience on the ground floor.
A few months ago, a senior bureaucrat came to him seeking the coveted cabinet secretary's post. "But that was one posting the prime minister alone had to decide. His relatives still do not venture to take up such big matters with him," says an insider.
Interestingly, many of the dubious deals of his namesake, V. Rajeshwar Rao, Rajya Sabha member and distantly related to the family, are ascribed to him. "V. Rajeshwar Rao does all sorts of things claiming proximity with us and Father has asked him to keep off," says he. The MP runs engineering colleges in Ramtek, Maharashtra; Hanamakonda, Andhra Pradesh; and a real estate business from Hyderabad. He is said to be worth several crores of rupees.
Rajeshwar Rao may also be using the MP as a shield. He explains away half a dozen reported misdemeanours ranging from driving a car while inebriated to gate-crashing the Chelmsford Club in New Delhi by saying: "Whatever the other Rajeshwar does is wrongly being attributed to me and my father has got them verified."
Though in 1977 he had embarrassed Rao by joining the Janata Party, their continued closeness stems from Ranga Rao treating his father shabbily and from their sharing a talent for classical music - they often sing as a duo.
With his fingers in several pies, Rajeshwar Rao is one Rao son who is expected to rise the most. But he also has the most potential to damage the prime minister's reputation.
P.V. Prabhakar Rao: An overnight success
Hero of the Goldstar group
The 40-year-old youngest son of the prime minister began as a small entrepreneur about 10 years ago. Today Prabhakar Rao is a director in the fast-rising Goldstar group of companies with an estimated turnover of Rs.250 crore. He owns 3 per cent (Rs.2.75 crore) of the Rs.71 crore equity of Goldstar Steel and Alloys Ltd.
An electronic engineer by training, he keeps his distance from politics. But according to family insiders, he played a role in arranging several large loans for the company in 1989.
The six Goldstar companies - among them Goldstar Remedies, Goldstar Holdings, and Goldstar Cement - are headquartered in Hyderabad and owned by an old Rao family friend, Krishna Mohan.
Goldstar Remedies is to make the high-demand analgesic, diclofenac sodium, which will replace the well-known painkiller Ibubrufen. Prabhakar Rao has also recently floated his own financial company called Sphinx.
While top company officials admit that their association with the prime minister's son may have helped in the past the publicity associated with him may boomerang because bureaucrats are now extremely cautious in dealing with the firm in order to avoid accusations of special favours.
Still, quite a success story for a man who had entered business with a paltry initial capital of Rs.25,000 in 1981. He later floated Sinclair Television and was the first to go into collaboration with a West German company, Grundig, for the manufacture of colour TV sets.
Despite the boom in the colour TV market and patronage from the defence services, Sinclair didn't take off, mostly because Prabhakar Rao then didn't have business expertise. So, he promptly converted it into Sinclair Electronics Ltd, manufacturing PABX sets.
As Goldstar plans expansion by taking over sick units, Prabhakar Rao's stock is certain to be on the up and up.
P.V. Ranga Rao: The odd one out
He aims to embarrass
An eccentric Ranga Rao befriends unpopular politiciansThe eldest son of Narasimha Rao suffers from the belief that he is more learned than his father as he has a doctorate in political science besides degrees in law, journalism and Indology.
P.V. Ranga Rao, 51, also makes it clear he does not owe an iota of his position in politics to his father. He is not even interested in projecting himself as heir apparent. "When I got involved in Congress activities in 1959, I never imagined my father would be prime minister of the country one day."
Ranga Rao's antagonism to his father can be gauged from the fact that he seldom misses an opportunity to embarrass him. His latest antic was unsuccessfully contesting a berth on the CWC at Tirupati, claiming to be Rao's nominee.
In 1970 he chose to invite the then DMK chief minister of Tamil Nadu, M. Karunanidhi, to inaugurate a college named after his mother, ignoring Rao who was state chief minister then.
Known to be eccentric, Ranga Rao, still a bachelor, befriends unpopular people with glee. His role model, incidentally, is Sanjay Gandhi, about whom he says: "I was the only person in the country to travel with Sanjay and Maneka after the Congress(I) defeat in 1977."
In that period, he also says, none of the state Congress(I) leaders except him dared visit the party headquarters and fly the party flag. His latest friend is Karnataka Chief Minister S. Bangarappa whom he defends by saying opposition leaders have no moral right to raise the corruption issue as "scandals and kickbacks were rampant" during the Janata period.
Despite their not being on speaking terms, Ranga Rao and the prime minister share one thing: their reverence for the controversial godman, Chandra Swami. The guru's framed photograph adorns Ranga Rao's drawing room in his compact ministerial apartment.
Perhaps the godman's alleged prophetic powers have rubbed off. Ranga Rao claims that even as a schoolboy he used to act as an education minister in a mock assembly, with Janata Dal leader S. Jaipal Reddy as the leader of the Opposition.
He even claims to "know my ultimate destination but I will not disclose it now". But his close friends point out that he is essentialy a daydreamer whose political aspirations are not taken seriously.
P. Manohar Rao: Retaining rusticity
Happy to oblige, sometimes
Manohar Rao and his son Manmohan Rao are happy with slim pickingsCompared to the prime minister's own sons, who are highly educated and making big strides in business or politics, his two brothers are quite unassuming. This is because Rao was adopted by a distant relative, P.V. Ranga Rao, when he was just eight. Rao later left Vangara village for higher education but his siblings remained behind for the greater part of their lives.
Yet, Rao has always been a concerned patriarch to his brothers, Madhav Rao, 65, blind since the age of six when he suffered an attack of smallpox, and P.V. Manohar Rao, 58, Rao wanted Manohar Rao to become a doctor but he scored poor marks in his ISC exams. Subsequently, Manohar Rao started getting civil contracts from the state Government.
Manohar Rao has not been in politics except as an aide to his brother, in which capacity he is sometimes part of the prime ministerial entourage. But the one time he got embroiled in a controversy, he was part of the team led by Deputy Commerce Minister Salman Khursheed on a tour of the Middle East last year.
In Dubai, he accepted the hospitality of A.E. Naser, chairman of East-West Airways, a new private Indian airline company. On his return, he had to face the wrath of Rao. "Big brother really scolded me," he recalls. Apparently, he was not aware of Naser's controversial reputation.
However, he candidly admits that all sorts of people come to the family to get something or the other fixed and in some cases they entertain their requests. "I sometimes meet ministers and Congress(I) leaders to get jobs for some of our friends and relatives as you simply cannot escape such obligations," Manohar Rao admits.
But he resents the fact that his liberty - as of other relatives - has been curtailed by Rao's elevation. Over a 100 of the clansmen are in the 'Z' security category. "People come here and they are searched.
I may not like it but police have their own rules and cannot relent," says Manohar Rao who has settled in Warangal like other Rao relatives following the Naxalite threat in Vangara village, of which he was once sarpanch.
Manohar Rao now shuttles between Warangal and Hyderabad, where his sons have business interests including a petrol pump and an agency from Indian Oil Corporation as well as some civil contracts. And he is content with his lot.
Extended family: And the rest
Clannish and content
Rao's other close kin are a motley crowd. Two of his daughters - Saraswati and Vijaya - are doctors and settled abroad. Saraswati's husband, Bharat Rao, is also a doctor and they have made New York their home. Vijaya and her doctor husband, Prasad Rao, live in the West Indies.
Rao's family is quite clannish. One of his sons-in-law (husband of Vani who runs a private art college), Dayakar Rao, is on the board of directors of Prabhakar Rao's firm, Sinclair. Laxmi Kanta Rao, father-in-law of Rajeshwar Rao and a close associate of Rao, is another director. Dayakar Rao is also involved in some units of the Goldstar group and has trained his eyes on big-time business.
Rao's fourth daughter Jaya's husband, K.R. Nandan, is a low-profile IPS officer posted as DIG in the Anti Corruption Bureau of the Police Department. In all, Rao has 15 grand-children from his eight children and his two brothers have 12 children. Rao appears to have started worrying about his relatives' activities. Recently he asked the SPG for a report on Rajeshwar Rao's alleged misdemeanours. But says Rajeshwar Rao: "We have been told to take things in our stride as media criticism is often exaggerated.'' His father, however, will have to be careful, otherwise the growth of extra-constitutional authority at home may compromise his position more than his ministers' involvement in the securities scam.
Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/prime-minister-raos-relatives-range-from-petr ol-pump-owners-to-industrialists/1/307727.html |
Archives - 2015