Vavilala Gopalakrishnaya

Vavilala Gopala Krishna(Telugu:వావిలాల గోపాలక్రిష్ణ) was a popular legislator in the 1950s and 1960s and religiously followed the Gandhian philosophy. A contemporary of Tanguturi Prakasam, first chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, and opposition stalwart Tenneti Vishwanatham, Vavilala was compared to prime ministers Gulzarilal Nanda and Lal Bahadur Shastri for his simplicity, clean character, and selfless service. He was a bachelor.

Biography

Born in 1908, he started his career as a journalist, but soon got actively involved in the freedom struggle. After Independence, he was elected to the assembly of the Madras Presidency in 1952, the Andhra State assembly in 1955, and the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly in 1962 and 1967 from Sattenapalli. On all four occasions, he was elected as an independent with the support of the undivided Communist Party of India. He was also associated with the cooperative movement and the library movement in Andhra Pradesh.

In his long political life, Vavilala participated in almost all major agitations in the state, including the Vishalandhra movement for the formation of Andhra Pradesh in the mid-1950s, the Nandigonda project agitation in Guntur, and farmers' agitations. He also participated in the anti-arrack agitation and the movement for total prohibition in the state in the 1990s. Vavilala was chairman of a state-level implementation committee for total prohibition before the ban on Indian-made foreign liquor was relaxed in 1997. He was also chairman of the Andhra Pradesh Official Language Commission

Awards

*Kalaprapurna (honorary doctorate), Andhra University
*1992: Padma Bhushan