“We are keen on working with Government agencies to make Siddapur the best model smart village in the youngest State of the country,” said Namrata Shirodkar, wife of actor Mahesh Babu, speaking about the village that he has adopted in Kothur mandal of adjoining Mahabubnagar district.
Herself an actor, she spent an hour interacting with Panchayati Raj Minister Jupally Krishna Rao on Monday morning in the presence of District Collector T.K. Sreedevi and senior officials. “We are interested to work for developing Siddapur. We have already visited it twice, when health camps were conducted,” she said.
Interestingly, the actor was to have originally adopted Chinthalapalli village of Gattu, a remote village about 100 km away from the district headquarters town of Mahabubnagar. However, on the suggestion of IT Minister K.T. Rama Rao, he chose to lend his name for integrated development of Siddapur, located about 20 km away from the Shamshabad InternationalAirport.
Coming to Siddapur, the Minister himself admitted that nothing short of an attitudinal change, of the mindset would usher in development. “Most houses do not have toilets and our officials are finding it tough to motivate them even though the government is ready to construct individual latrines. Another area where Mr. Mahesh Babu has agreed to work with us is adding new classrooms adjacent to the existing high school building,” he told presspersons.
Also present were Shadnagar MLA Y. Anjaiah Yadav, Founder Trustee of the Heal-a-Child Foundation, Sabina Xavier, Mahabubnagar Zilla Parishad Chief Executive Officer V. Laxminarayana, District Panchayat Officer Venkateswarlu and Kothur Tahsildar Nagaiah.
Ms. Sreedevi said that 490 individual latrines at a unit cost of Rs. 12,000 each and additional classrooms at the rate of Rs. 8.5 lakh each for the school have been sanctioned and work was slowly picking up. “We will also sanction the double laning and black-topping of the roads behind the village that lead to the main road to an extent of about 1.5 km. Siddapur’s proximity to the airport and the highway is a unique selling proposition for other celebrities to chip in,” she explained.
Asked about what the actor’s contribution would be to the development of this village, Ms. Namrata said they were working it out with the district administration and that the exact numbers were not known yet.
