Two-time MPs Gangapuram Kishan Reddy (63) and Bandi Sanjay Kumar (52) – from Telangana’s Secunderabad and Karimnagar respectively – are set to be inducted as Union ministers on Sunday, when the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA government’s council of ministers take oath. Kishan Reddy, the president of the BJP’s Telangana unit, was also the Union minister for Tourism, Culture, and Development of North Eastern Region in the second Modi Cabinet. After the creation of Telangana state in 2014, Reddy was the first BJP state president from 2014 to 2016, and then was given the post again in 2023, taking over from Bandi Sanjay Kumar. Reddy is also a three-time MLA — having won twice from Amberpet Assembly constituency in 2009 and 2014. In the December 2018 Assembly polls, he suffered a big defeat at the hands of the Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS) candidate, but five months later, was elected as MP from Secunderabad. Hailing from Timmapur in Rangareddy district, Reddy has a diploma in tool design, and has been interested in politics since his student days, when he joined the Janata Party. He later joined the BJP and was the first state treasurer of the BJP unit in undivided Andhra Pradesh in the early 1980s. Later, he also became state secretary of the BJP Yuva Morcha. He was first elected as MLA from Himayatnagar in Hyderabad in 2004, which was later merged in Khairtabad constituency. In this year’s Lok Sabha election, Reddy defeated Congress’s Danam Nagender by 49,944 votes in Secunderabad. Firebrand BJP leader Bandi Sanjay Kumar, who was the president of the party’s Telangana unit from May 2020 to July 2023, was elected as an MP in both 2019 and this year. The BJP National General Secretary has been known as a staunch critic of the previous BRS government and former chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao, as well as the current A Revanth Reddy-led Congress government in the state. Having started out as an RSS volunteer in his early years, Kumar is widely credited for expanding the BJP’s footprint in Telangana. His aggressive stance was on display during the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) elections in December 2020, in which the BJP sprang a surprise and won 48 of 150 seats. Under his leadership, the party also won two crucial Assembly bypolls – in the Huzurabad and Dubbaka seats. Kumar had also contested the 2014, 2018, and 2023 Assembly elections, but lost. During his student days, he was a leader of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), and was appointed the organisation’s Karimnagar president. Rising through the ranks, he became the ABVP’s national secretary, and in 1996, he accompanied BJP leader L K Advani for several days during the latter’s Rath Yatra. He was also the Karimnagar municipal corporator twice and has been known for his pro-Hindutva speeches. To protest against what he called the “BRS government’s failures”, Kumar had in 2021 launched a statewide Praja Sangram Yatra. In five phases, he covered nearly 60 Assembly constituencies, walking over 1,500 km in 120 days. After winning from the Karimnagar Lok Sabha seat in 2019, he was appointed as a member of the Parliamentary Committee on OBC welfare, Parliamentary Committee on Urban Development in 2019, the Tobacco Board, and the Minority Affairs State Level Committee. This year, he defeated Congress’s Velchala Rajender Rao by 2,25,209 votes in Karimnagar.
