Pawan Kalyan names brother Naga Babu as Jana Sena candidate for MLC polls

Amaravati, March 5 (IANS) Andhra Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan has announced his brother K. Naga Babu as his Jana Sena's candidate for the Legislative Council election. 

Pawan Kalyan, who is the Jana Sena President, cleared the candidature of Naga Babu, who is a General Secretary of the party.

Naga Babu, the elder brother of Pawan Kalyan and the younger brother of megastar Chiranjeevi, is also an actor and film producer. He had actively campaigned for the party in the last year’s elections.

As Naga Babu is not a member of either house of the Legislature, his election as an MLC will pave the way for his induction into the state Cabinet as Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu had already announced he would be made a minister.

Elections to five seats of the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Council from the MLAs’ quota are scheduled on March 10.

The Telugu Desam Party-led National Democratic Alliance is in a strong position to sweep the polls. The TDP and its allies, the Jana Sena and the BJP, together have 164 seats in the 175-member Assembly.

The TDP has 135 members while the Jana Sena and the BJP have 21 and 8 seats, respectively. The TDP may leave two MLC seats for the Jana Sena and one for the BJP.

While announcing two candidates for the by-elections to the Rajya Sabha and leaving the third seat for the BJP, Naidu, who is also the TDP President decided to accommodate the other partner Jana Sena in the state Cabinet.

The TDP had reportedly offered a Rajya Sabha seat to the Jana Sena but Naga Babu was keen to become a minister. After leaving the Rajya Sabha seat for the BJP, Naidu decided to include Naga Babu into the Cabinet.

Naga Babu, also known as Nagendra Babu, will be the fourth minister from the Jana Sena.

Currently, Pawan Kalyan, Nadendla Manohar and Kandula Durgesh are the ministers from Jana Sena in the Naidu Cabinet.

The state Cabinet can have a maximum of 25 members. Chandrababu Naidu and 23 ministers had taken oath on June 12. The TDP had inducted three ministers from Jana Sena and one from BJP. One vacancy was left for Jana Sena.

Naga Babu has been working with Pawan Kalyan ever since he floated the Jana Sena in 2014.

Both had earlier actively worked for the Praja Rajyam Party (PRP) floated by their eldest brother Chiranjeevi in 2008. However, the party came a cropper in the 2009 polls and two years later, Chiranjeevi had merged it with the Congress.