Koneru Ramakrishna Rao Bhavan inaugurated

Visakhapatnam: Former Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu inaugurated Koneru Ramakrishna Rao Bhavan at GITAM here on Sunday. The building which houses the School of Social Sciences and Humanities on the campus was rechristened. Padmashri Awardee late Koneru Ramakrishna Rao was an internationally reputed psychologist, Gandhian scholar who served as Chancellor of the institution, president of the Indian Academy of Applied Psychology and elected thrice as president of Parapsychological Association.

Addressing the gathering, former Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu said that he was inspired by late Prof Koneru Ramakrishna Rao during his student days at Andhra University and maintained good relations with Rao. He appreciated the family members for deciding to donate Prof Rao's earnings to GITAM for its development. He mentioned that one should be proud of India's heritage, culture and forefathers. The former Vice President exhorted the present generations to draw inspiration from Prof Rao. There was a time when people from all over the world came to study in the ancient Indian universities of Nalanda and Taxila, but even at the height of its prosperity, India never thought of attacking any country because the country firmly believed that the world needs peace, Naidu recalled.

Presiding over the ceremony, GITAM president M Sribharath informed that Prof K Ramakrishna Rao donated Rs 4.5 crore to the institution to organise community development programmes. He said that the amount will be used to establish, maintain and administer educational institutions and service centres and conduct training programmes, research projects to promote rural literacy, empower women and engage counsellors to provide counselling to the needy for their psychological health and economic well-being. Koneru Ramakrishna Rao's son Koneru Sarath Chandra, son in law Poorna Sagruthi thanked the institution for renaming the bhavan. Institution's Vice Chancellor Dayananda Siddavattam, Pro Vice-Chancellors B. Geetanjali, Y. Gowtham Rao, Jayashankar Vairyar and Registrar D. Gunasekharan participated in the meeting.