India: Chandrababu Naidu, co-brother Daggubati Venkateswara Rao come together after three decades

Visakhapatnam: After three decades of strained relations, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu and his co-brother Daggubati Venkateswara Rao shared the dais on Thursday and decided to bury the hatchet.

The sons-in-law of Telugu Desam Party (TDP) founder and former chief minister N. T. Rama Rao (NTR) embraced each other after Venkateswara Rao urged Chandrababu Naidu to forget the past and not harbor any ill feelings.

The occasion was the release of Venkateswara Rao’s book ‘Prapancha Charitra’ (World History), in the presence of former Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, and Venkateswara Rao’s wife and BJP state president Daggubati Purandeswari.

“You all know about it. That’s in the past and it’s over. I laud him for all his efforts and wish him the best for the future,” said the former MP, addressing Chandrababu Naidu.

When Venkateswara Rao returned to his seat after his speech, Chandrababu Naidu stood up to hug him, amid thunderous applause from the audience.

In his speech, Chandrababu Naidu praised Venkateswara Rao for writing the book and expressed that he didn’t know Venkateswara Rao had such depth.

The conflict between the co-brothers dates back to the 1990s when Chandrababu Naidu led a revolt against NTR to become the chief minister of the then united Andhra Pradesh. Venkateswara Rao, who had initially supported Naidu, later sided with NTR.

After NTR’s death, a few months following the revolt, Venkateswara Rao remained with NTR TDP (LP), led by NTR’s second wife Lakshmi Parvathi. In 1999, he joined Anna TDP, which was floated by NTR’s son Harikrishna. After the party’s humiliating defeat, he stayed away from politics for a few years. In 2004, he, along with his wife, joined the Congress party at the invitation of Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy.

Though Purandeswari, who was elected to the Lok Sabha twice on a Congress ticket and even became a minister in the UPA government, switched loyalty to the BJP in 2014 following the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, Venkateswara Rao joined the YSR Congress Party.

A former Rajya Sabha member, Venkateswara Rao was elected to the Andhra Pradesh Assembly on a Congress ticket from Parchur in 2004 and 2009. He had stayed away from active politics after his defeat in 2019 from the same constituency as the YSR Congress candidate.

Though Chandrababu Naidu and Venkateswara Rao had differences and were not seen together for three decades, Purandeswari and her sister Bhuvaneswari (Naidu’s wife) maintained their family ties.