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her husband in the district. She was arrested along with her husband PVG Raju on 9 December, 1955 at Macherla. A question was asked in the Assembly, \Chief Minister be pleased to state the circumstances under which Mr. P. V. G. Raju and Mrs. Kusum Gajapathi Raju were arrested under the Preventive Detention Act?%u201dAnswering the question Mr. Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy said, %u201cSri P. V. G. Raju and his party insisted upon presenting a memorandum to Prime Minister accompanied by a demonstration regarding certain problems at the dam site (Nagarjuna Sagar) and at the time of the inauguration of the project by the Prime Minister notwithstanding the offer of the Government to permit and provide facilities for him to present a memorandum to Prime Minister at Macherla. The Government had reason to believe that this would interfere with the solemnity of the occasion and provoke resentment amongst a large section of the gathering at the dam site resulting in a breach of peace and therefore Government had no alternative but to take Sri and Srimathi Raju and others, who were organising mass marches to the dam site, into preventive custody under section 151 Cr. P. C. and not under the Preventive Detention Act on 9-12-1955. They were released on 11-12-1955.%u201dHere is a speech delivered by Kusum Gajapathi Raju in the Andhra Pradesh Assembly on 26th July,1957 that reveals both her political acumen and sharpness of interrogation:With your permission, I would like to go a little bit into the time before the formation of the Andhra Pradesh. The Telugu-speaking areas were divided into two parts in the country. What was formerly Andhra and what was formerly Telangana, they came together for the cultural resurgence of Telugu culture; but there can be no such cultural resurgence without a sufficiently good economic rehabilitation of the working classes - instead of the present show we have and 115