Balakrishna, NTR's actor son, to contest for Andhra Pradesh assembly

The actor, whose latest film Legend, is drawing large crowds, decided to take the plunge into politics finally after consulting the TDP president N. Chandrababu Naidu.

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Balakrishna, NTR's actor son, to contest for Andhra Pradesh assembly
Balakrishna

Balakrishna

TDP founder N.T. Rama Rao's popular actor son Nandamuri Balakrishna is to contest for the 175 seat Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly from the family pocket borough Hindupur near the Andhra Pradesh border with Karnataka. Elections are to be held to the truncuated assembly as well as 25 Lok Sabha seats in the region on May 7. The actor, whose latest film Legend, is drawing large crowds, decided to take the plunge into politics finally after consulting the TDP president N. Chandrababu Naidu.

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Balakrishna, the fourth son of NTR, is also Naidu's brother-in-law. The TDP chief is married to Bhuvaneswari, the third daughter of NTR, and their only child son Lokesh, is married to Balakrishna's elder daughter, Brahmani. Speculation about the political debut of Balaiah, as he is popularly known, was rife in the run up to the 2004 and 2009 elections. But he turned reluctant as the deadline for announcing the names of contestants neared.

Significantly, NTR had named him as his political heir but he limited himself to campaigning for the party. Now, he has chosen Hindupur, barely two hours by road from Bengaluru, over other constituencies as his father was elected from the relatively backward tract in the arid Anantapur district in 1985, 1989 and 1994. Thereafter, NTR's third son N. Harikrishna, was elected in the by election for the Hindupur seat in 1996 following NTR's death. What is more the TDP has won this assembly seat without a break since the party's inception in 1982.

Harikrishna, who briefly ran the breakaway Democratic Telugu Desam Party, has been a state minister and a member of the Rajya Sabha earlier. His sister, Purandeswari, the second daughter of NTR, elected twice to the Lok Sabha in 2004 and 2009 has also been a two term member of the Manmohan Singh ministry. She is now in the BJP and awaiting word about a Lok Sabha ticket.