Team News Riveting
Hyderabad, December 5
When Revanth Reddy asserted, “My only agenda in life is to dethrone KCR [K Chandrashekar Rao] and make his family irrelevant in politics,” many political pundits did not take his words seriously.
The 54-year-old former Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) leader translated his vision into action and will now head the Congress government in Telangana. Having served in different political parties before switching over to the Congress in 2017, Reddy is presently holding the post of Telangana Congress President. He led the party to trounce KCR’s Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), the party from where he started his political career in 2001-02.
After dabbling in real estate and other businesses, Reddy began his political career under the very same KCR as a member of TRS (now BRS) around 2001-2002. However, after being sidelined by the party, he quit the TRS in 2006. An Arts Graduate from AV College, he was associated with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
He contested as an independent candidate in the Zilla Parishad Territorial Constituency in Midjil Mandal, Mahabubnagar. Subsequently, in 2007, he won the MLC elections as an independent candidate in Mahabubnagar. Later, he joined the Telugu Desam Party. He was first elected MLA from Kodangal constituency in 2009. He retained the seat in the next election. But in the face of the KCR wave in 2018, he faced a setback. He lost the seat to Patnam Narender Reddy with a margin of nearly 9,000 votes.
The TDP had to face an existential crisis in Telangana following KCR’s poaching strategy. The Congress was also a victim. Realising the waning status of the TDP in Telangana, Revanth joined the Congress in 2017.
Revanth Reddy had vowed eight years ago to rout the BRS. In the state assembly elections, Congress bagged 64 seats and secured an absolute majority to form the government in Telangana. Reddy, who has been elected as Congress Legislative Party leader, is likely to be sworn in as the Chief Minister of Telangana on December 9, the day coinciding with Sonia Gandhi’s birthday.
