- Tuesday, April 22, 2025
Many hope that Vadluru village in East Godavari district will feature in the itinerary of Usha Vance when she visits India next time
By: India Weekly
PRIDE and anticipation swept through Vadluru village in Andhra Pradesh’s East Godavari district as Usha Chilukuri Vance, wife of US Vice President JD Vance, embarked on a visit to India along with her family.
The US Second Lady’s ancestors belong to Vadluru village, a region endowed with greenery and nourished by Godavari river.
The Vances and their three children – sons Ewan, Vivek and daughter Mirabel, landed in Delhi on a largely personal four-day visit to India that comes amid growing global tensions over the US tariff war.
“We all came to know that Usha has come to Delhi. We, on behalf of the residents of Vadluru, eagerly expect her to come to this village to see her ancestors, temples… We are all eagerly waiting for her,” PV Ramanaiah, a villager told PTI Videos.
V Badrinath said that since Vadluru is the US Second Lady’s ancestral village, everybody in the village is elated and hopes that she will visit them.
However, Vadluru does not feature in the itinerary of Usha Vance, prompting locals like P Srinivasa Raju, a former sarpanch of the village, to be better prepared next time.
“We didn’t know that this (Usha’s visit) would be such a sudden programme,” Raju told PTI, adding that over the last 10 days, intelligence and revenue department officials kept visiting Vadluru to gather information on the Second Lady’s roots.
According to Raju, Vadluru was earlier located in the undivided West Godavari district but now falls in East Godavari district under Undrajavaram mandal.
Had we known about Usha Vance’s visit about a fortnight or a month earlier, our village elders would have set off to meet her in some city like Hyderabad or Chennai where she would be visiting, he said.
Raju said they would have also taken the help of Tourism Minister and Nidadavolu MLA Kandula Durgesh to meet Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu to reach out to Usha Vance.
Similarly, C Santhamma, a nonagenarian relative of Usha Vance, said she is very happy to see her relative rising to a great position.
Santhamma said she would not only love to meet Usha Vance but also give her an opportunity to address students of the college were she works as a lecturer. (PTI)
