Kinjarapu Ram Mohan Naidu: An unlikely entry into politics

It was an accident that brought the 36-year-old Kinjarapu Ram Mohan Naidu into politics. The year was 2012. 

Reddy, an alumnus of Delhi Public School in R. K. Puram in New Delhi, had completed studying electrical engineering from Purdue University and had followed it up with an MBA from Long Island University in the US, before working in Singapore. It was on a fateful day in November that year he got a call from India informing him that his father Kinjarapu Yerran Naidu had died in a road accident. 

He rushed back to India and never really left again. His father, a senior Telugu Desam Party (TDP) functionary, had been a minister for rural development in the United Front Government headed by H.D. Deve Gowda and I.K. Gujral between 1996 and 98. He contested from his father’s Srikakulam constituency for TDP in 2014, and was elected as an MP when he was just 26. He won again in 2019 and in the recent 2024 election as well, defeating the YSRCP candidate by a margin of 320,000 votes.

While he may not have planned a career as a politician, Reddy embraced the profession wholeheartedly. As a Member of the Parliament, he was active. He was a member of various standing committees on agriculture, animal husbandry, food processing, railways, home affairs, tourism & culture and more. In the Parliament, he passionately fought for menstrual health and sex education, apart from seeking removal of Goods & Services Tax on sanitary napkins. He also represented India at the UN General Assembly in the 22nd meeting of the First Committee on Disarmament.

A firm believer that youth have a major role to play in politics and in solving people’s problems, he started an internship for students called ‘politics for impact’. Selected students get to work in his constituency for two months.

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Published: 09 Jun 2024, 08:39 PM IST