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Saturday, 26 November 2011

Telugu Desam grandsons in succession battle

V V Balakrishna
Last Updated : 29 May 2011 07:28:16 AM IST

HYDERABAD: With Junior NTR, film actor and son of Rajya Sabha member Nandamuri Harikrishna, giving a miss to Mahanadu, the three-day annual conclave of the Telugu Desam Party which is underway in Hyderabad, the air is pregnant with the uneasy feeling that the Chandrababu Naidu’s successor issue is once again hotting up.

While Naidu’s son Nara Lokesh Naidu is being projected as his successor, NTR’s grandson—NTR Jr and Harikrishna’s son are battling it out for the TDP throne. In Krishna, the native place of TDP founder late N T Rama Rao, the party is divided into Harikrishna and Naidu factions. When N Chandrababu Naidu went to NTR Ghat on Saturday to pay homage to the leader, slogans were raised that NTR’s family be treated with more vitality in the party. TDP activists from Chandragiri, Chittoor—Naidu’s stronghold—demand Lokesh be given the charge, indicating he might contest the seat in the 2014 polls. Harikrishna’s  followers  demand NTR Jr be given an important role in TDP. Harikrishna is a politburo member of TDP and a Rajya Sabha member.

NTR Jr is a leading Telugu actor, while Lokesh runs the family business, Heritage Foods, that makes dairy products. Lokesh was also poll manager for his father Naidu in the Kuppam Assembly constituency.

Family politics got mur­kier when Naidu used Balakrishna, another of  NTR’s sons Balakrishna, whose daughter Brahmani is married to son Lokesh. Balakrishna too is a star campaigner for the  TDP, which blamed NTR’s dau­ghter and Union Minister D Purandeswari for causing the trouble in the party at the behest of the Congress. Naidu earlier “NTR Jr is busy with films and Lokesh is busy with business”.

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