Namaskaram, Chief Minister Revanth Reddy; Congress names Telangana Chief Minister

Anumula Revanth Reddy, the face of the Congress’ campaign in Telangana, will become the next Chief Minister of Telangana, announced Congress General Secretary K. C. Venugopal on Tuesday. The decision was taken 48 hours after the results were declared, in a meeting attended by Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge, senior leader Rahul Gandhi, K. C. Venugopal, Deputy Chief Minister D. K. Shivakumar and other party leaders. The announcement was made by K. C. Venugopal in a press conference, making Reddy the third Chief Minister of the youngest state of India.

The grand old party won Telangana state elections, winning 64 seats, beating the incumbent Bharat Rashtra Samithi, who won 39 seats. Revanth Reddy won from Kodangal constituency by a margin of more than thirty-two thousand votes. Congress had decided to conduct the swearing-in ceremony on December 6 but had to postpone because of objections from senior leaders Bhatti Vikramarka, N. Uttam Kumar Reddy, Komatireddy Venkat Reddy and Damodar Raja Narasimha. Revanth Reddy reportedly received the support of 42 out of 64 Congress MLAs.

Who is Anumula Revanth Reddy?

Anumula Revanth Reddy began his political career in student politics as a member of the ABVP. He joined the Telangana (now Bharat) Rashtra Samithi in 2001, under the same K. Chandrasekhar Rao he is set to replace as the state's Chief Minister. After being sidelined by the party, he quit TRS in 2006. In 2007, he was elected as an Independent MLA in then-undivided Andhra Pradesh. Later, Reddy joined the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and was considered close to N. Chandrababu Naidu, former CM of Andhra Pradesh. He was elected to the Legislative Assembly on a ticket from the TDP in 2009 and then again in 2014 after the formation of Telangana.

In May 2015, Reddy was allegedly caught on camera trying to bribe sitting MLA Elvis Stephenson to vote in favour of the TDP candidate in the Legislative Council elections and arrested. A month later, he secured a conditional bail from Telangana High Court.

Rumours of him wanting to join the Congress emerged in 2017. On October 31, he joined the Congress party. In 2018, he lost the Legislative Assembly Election from Telangana but won in 2019 general elections from Malkajgiri Lok Sabha Constituency. Despite being a junior in the party, he was appointed president of the Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee in 2021, much to the resentment of senior Congress leaders of the state.

He led the Congress’ campaign against incumbent Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao in the 2023 Telangana assembly elections and contested the elections from two seats, Kamareddy and Kodangal. Incumbent CM KCR also contested the former. Both Reddy and KCR lost from Kamareddy to BJP candidate K. V. Ramana Reddy, but Reddy secured a victory in Kodangal.​