13th Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh

Early Life

Nara Chandrababu Naidu (born 20 April 1950) is the President of Telugu Desam Party (TDP), a regional party in the south India state of Andhra Pradesh from 1996. He served as the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh for 8 years 8 months 13 days (1995–2004).

He is the Leader of opposition in the AP State Assembly since then. Both Tony Blair, former Prime Minister of England and Bill Clinton, Former President of the USA visited him at Hyderabad, the Andhra Pradesh state capital.

The governor of Illinois, USA declared a Naidu Day in his honour. He also won numerous awards including 'IT Indian of the Millenium' by India Today, Business Person of the Year by Economic Times, member of the World Economic Forum's Dream Cabinet and South Asian of the Year by Time Asia.

He also held post of chairperson of the "National IT Panel" under NDA government and he was described as one of the Hidden Seven working wonders around the world, by Profit, a monthly magazine published by Oracle Corporation, US

Naidu was born in Naravari Palle village of Chittoor district on 20 April 1950. His father N. Kharjura Naidu was into agriculture and his mother Ammanamma was a housewife. Due to lack of an education centre in his Native village, Naidu attended the Seshapuram primary school up to Class Five.

He attended the Chandragiri Government High School, till class 9.[8] He went to Tirupati for his higher education, where he studied from class 10 to his masters.

Naidu completed his BA in 1972, after which he enrolled in the MA (economics) course. In 1974, he started work on his Ph.D under the guidance of Professor D L Narayana, who was the then Andhra Pradesh State Finance Commission chairman.

The topic was Economic ideas of Professor N G Ranga. He did not complete his Ph.D and got involved in active politics

Early political career

Naidu entered the political scene as a youth leader from Chandragiri and after that there was no looking back for him. During the Emergency, he was appointed as Pulicherla Youth Congress president. He became close to then prime minister Indira Gandhi's son Sanjay Gandhi.

Legislative career 1978–1983

Naidu got a Congress ticket in 1978 under the 20 per cent quota for youth from the Chandragiri Constituency. He was elected into the state assembly of Andhra Pradesh in 1978 as a member of the Congress Party, and he became the Minister of Technical Education and Cinematography in T Anjaiah's cabinet, making him the state's youngest assembly member and youngest minister at the age of 28.

Being the Minister of State for Cinematography, he came into contact with the then superstar and Matinee Idol of Telugu Cinema, late Nandamuri Taraka Rama Rao (NTR).

The Nadamuri family was impressed with Chandrababu Naidu, and they soon proposed that NTR's daughter Bhuvaneswari be married to him. The wedding was conducted on a grand scale in Madras.

Telugu Desam Party

In early 1982, there were rumours that NTR was planning to plunge into politics by floating a regional political party. Nine months before the scheduled general elections, NTR floated a regional party Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and was said to have invited Naidu to join the party, but Naidu stuck to the Congress party and contested again from Chandragiri constituency against a rival TDP candidate Venkatarama Naidu. The TDP swept the polls, and won by a huge majority.

It was the first time Indian National Congress was defeated in the State after Independence. Naidu joined the TDP after he was defeated in the elections, predicting he would have a better future in his father-in-law's party.

Rise in the party

Naidu soon became NTR's trusted lieutenant and right hand man. When Nadendla Bhaskara Rao staged the infamous coup against NTR in August 1984, it was Chandrababu Naidu who helped his father-in-law (NTR) regain power by rallying and parading all the MLA's before the President of India at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

NTR appointed Naidu as the General Secretary of the party. He began playing a crucial role in the TDP after Nadendla Bhaskara Rao's coup.

NTR opted for a mid-term poll after regaining the chief ministership, but Naidu did not contest the poll. The Nadendla factor gave NTR another landslide. Naidu slowly started to become a second power center in the TDP and was believed to be building his own group in the party.

Legislative career 1989–1994

In the 1989 Assembly Elections, Chandrababu Naidu contested from his native constituency Kuppam and won with a slender majority of 5,000-odd votes. But as the Congress had regained power in the state elections, Naidu had to sit in the Opposition.

Palace Coup

In 1994, the TDP regained power following an anti-Congress wave triggered by an anti-liquor agitation and a strong anti-incumbency factor. Naidu became the Finance and Revenue minister in NTR's cabinet. On 23 August 1995 Naidu engineered an internal party coup against NTR.

His main reason to takeover the party and government from NTR was that NTR's second wife Lakshmi Parvathi was mishandling the party internal affairs to be the successor to NTR in the party and that the party was in danger of disintegrating. He convinced majority of the party about the dangers of Lakshmi Parvathi's damaging decisions keeping NTR in the dark.

Naidu took over the post of Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh on 1 September 1995. He was also chosen as president of the Telugu Desam Party, sidelining NTR from TDP. NTR's sons, actors Nandamuri Harikrishna and Nandamuri Balakrishna and son-in-law Daggubati Venkateswara Rao played a crucial role in the coup.

As a Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh

As chief minister, Chandrababu Naidu, had called for short-term sacrifices to turn Andhra Pradesh into an Asian tiger over the next 20 years. Naidu soon slashed subsidies for – among other things – food, and he raised power tariffs.

Both CNN and Time gave widespread coverage to Naidu's way of functioning, CNN said, In just five years, he has turned an impoverished, rural backwater place into India's new information technology hub.

Time magazine has awarded Naidu as South Asian of the Year. Naidu was the West's favourite Indian. Tony Blair and Bill Clinton both visited him in Hyderabad, the state capital. The governor of Illinois created a Naidu Day in his honour, and the British government and the World Bank flooded his state with money. They loved him because he did what he was told

Vision 2020

Naidu came up with a vision document "Vision 2020" which was devised by US consultancy firm McKinsey & Company.[citation needed] It states that education and healthcare must be made available to everyone at a cost. Generate employment in the countryside Replace small investors with large corporations.

1999 election victory

Telugu Desam Party (TDP) led by Mr.Naidu won a majority in the state house winning 185/294 seats in the State Assembly and 29/42 in the Lok Sabha. Telugu Desam Party and its ally Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) together bagged 37/42 seats in the Lok Sabha segment. Making it the second-largest ally in the new BJP led coalition government.

Hyderabad's development

Naidu quoted, "If you want to develop a state, you have to make its main cities a showpiece. Hyderabad is the capital of Andhra Pradesh. Naturally, when a foreign investor is coming, if I ask them to go to Warangal, Tirupati or Vijayawada they may not go. So for the key sectors like information technology, biotechnology, healthcare and various outsourcing services."

Naidu started the slogan " Bye-Bye Banglore, Hello Hyderabad". Microsoft Corporation has already set up a software development centre in Hyderabad, the second such centre outside its base in Seattle.

Naidu managed to coax other global IT giants IBM, Dell, Deloitte, Computer Associates and Oracle to set up shop in Hyderabad, at a time when India hardly featured on global IT majors' radar. Naidu made impressive presentations before global CEOs and convinced them to invest in his state

2003 assassination attempt

On 1 October 2003, Naidu survived a land mine blast, He escaped with a fractured left collar bone and a hairline fracture to two of his right ribs. The incident occurred around 16:00 (IST) when Naidu was traveling in a convoy, heading to the Lord Venkateshwara temple in the Tirumala hills for the annual Brahmotsavam festival.

The State Information Technology Minister B. Gopalakrishna Reddy, Telugu Desam legislators R. Rajasekhar Reddy and Ch. Krishnamurthy, as well as the driver Srinivasa Raju, were also injured. After an extensive investigation Naidu's survival was attributed to the armoured vehicle in which he was traveling.

2004 elections failure

The Telugu Desam Party led by Chandrababu Naidu failed to come into the power after two successive wins, winning as low as 47/294 constituencies in the state assembly and 5/42 in the Lok Sabha segment. While many of his ministers lost, Naidu himself won by a huge margin in Kuppam.