Vangaveeti Mohana Ranga

Vangaveeti Mohana Ranga Rao (4 July 1947 – 26 December 1988) was an Indian politician from Andhra Pradesh. He represented Vijayawada East assembly constituency as a member of Indian National Congress.

Ranga's elder brother, Vangaveeti Radha Krishna Rao Sr., was associated with Chalasani Venkata Rathnam, secretary of the Communist Party of India, Vijayawada. However, conflicts arose between Venkata Rathnam and Vangaveeti Radha, to get a hold on Vijayawada transport business, dominated by Datti Kanaka Rao, a follower of Chalasani Venkata Rathnam. In 1972, both Kanaka Rao, and Venkata Rathnam were allegedly murdered by Vangaveeti Radha's supporters. These events in turn led to a retaliation by a rival group, ending in the murder of Vangaveeti Radha. Upon the death of Vangaveeti Radha, his brother Mohana Ranga took over the leadership of United independent Organization with the support of student union leaders Devineni Chandrasekhar (Gandhi), and Devineni Rajasekhar (Nehru).

The power struggle between the politically powerful Mohana Ranga and the Devineni family led to the splitting of the United Independent Organization and to the alleged protracted murders of brothers Devineni Chandrasekhar (Gandhi) in 1979 and Devineni Murali in 1988. The murder led to large-scale riots in erstwhile Krishna, Guntur and the Godavari districts.

Riots Following his death, there were riots throughout the region. The pattern of violence showed that the houses and property of Telugu Desam sympathisers who were mostly Kammas were attacked.

Successors Mohana Ranga's widow Ratna Kumari was elected MLA in 1989; in her second term, she switched from the Congress Party to the TDP. He was a Congress Party MLA from 2004 to 2009; later he shifted to the Praja Rajyam Party (PRP) then to the YSR Congress Party in 2012, and then to TDP in 2019.

In popular culture

Chaitanya Ratham, a 1987 film based on the life of Mohana Ranga starring Bhanu Chander and Sarath Babu in lead roles and produced by Radha Mitra Mandali Movies Sahasame Naa Oopiri, a 1989 film directed by Vijaya Nirmala and starring Krishna in the lead role was based on the murder of Mohana Ranga Vangaveeti, 2016 biographical film on Vangaveeti Mohana Ranga, directed by Ram Gopal Varma