Hyderabad: The elevation of Kalvakuntla Taraka Rama Rao as the Working President of the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi Friday cements his position as the second top leader in the party after his father and Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao.
It has been a meteoric rise for 42-year-old Rama Rao, popularly known as KTR, since he took the political plunge in 2009, quitting a lucrative job in the U.S. He was appointed to the newly created post in the nearly two decade old TRS, days after the party led by Chandrasekhar Rao swept the Telangana assembly elections.
Though Rama Rao was long considered the No. 2 in the party, his elevation formalises his powerful position. After doing M.Sc. Biotechnology from the University of Pune, Rao went on to obtain MBA degree in Marketing and E-Commerce from City University of New York, US.
KTR had worked in the US for six years from 2001 before entering the political arena during the separate Telangana agitation spearheaded by the TRS. Rao, won from Sircilla constituency for the fourth time in the recent assembly polls with an impressive over 88,000 votes.
As a minister for Information Technology and Industries between 2014 and 2018 in Raos cabinet, KTR was credited with ushering in novel initiatives such as the “T Hub” the country’s largest incubator for startups; generating skilled workers through Telangana Academy of Skill and knowledge (TASK), among others.