At centre of Parliament ‘dogfight’, Renuka Chowdhury’s stormy journey: NTR protégé to Congress firebrand

Chowdhury, 71, said it was a stray dog whom she had “rescued” on her way to Parliament. Later, the Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, also waded into the row apparently in her defence.

Chowdhury, who is no stranger to controversy, has always been a fiery leader known for speaking her mind. Her colleagues say that she was “defiance personified” even at the beginning of her political career, when Telugu Desam Party (TDP) founder NT Rama Rao, popularly known as NTR, was her mentor.

“Renuka was a homemaker when TDP faced an internal coup in 1984. Nadendla Bhaskar Rao then raised a banner of revolt and became Andhra Pradesh chief minister when NTR was abroad for treatment. Renuka took to the streets with some of her supporters and challenged Bhaskar Rao in small public meetings. When NTR managed to regain chief ministership following Nadendla Bhaskar’s 31-day tenure, he personally asked Renuka to meet him. Soon afterwards, she was elected as a TDP corporator in the Hyderabad civic body,” a Congress leader close to her told The Indian Express.

In 1986, Chowdhury was elected as a Rajya Sabha MP even while she was a corporator from a Jubilee Hill ward in Hyderabad. “NTR wanted her to be in Delhi. He said that she would do really well and she did,” the Congress leader said.

Chowdhury’s grit was tested repeatedly during the NTR period. At the time, Congress leaders Kotla Vijaya Bhaskar Reddy and YS Rajasekhara Reddy dominated Rayalaseema politics. “She alone went to Rayalaseema to campaign for TDP. NTR lauded her courage,” her aide said. “In Rayalaseema, she encountered violence and stood her ground.”

Chowdhury was in the Rajya Sabha for two consecutive terms from 1986 to 1998 and was the TDP’s chief whip in the Upper House. She also served as the Union Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare during 1997-98 in the H D Deve Gowda-led United Front government. Towards the end of 1998, she quit the TDP and joined the Congress.

“During her stint with the TDP, Renuka was known to be close to NTR. Once N Chandrababu Naidu (the current Andhra Pradesh CM and TDP chief) took the reins of the party (in 1995), she was sidelined for being seen as ‘too much of a loose cannon’,” a Congress leader said.

In 1999, she won the Lok Sabha election from Khammam, which she also retained in 2004. In the Congress-led UPA government, she served as the Minister of State for Tourism. As the Union Minister of Women and Child Development from January 2006 to May 2009, she began her advocacy for women’s rights. “She played an important role in shaping legislation aimed at combating violence against women. Her efforts paid off when the UPA government passed the anti-domestic violence Act in 2005,” her aide said. The Act is seen as a comprehensive legal framework to address various forms of abuse — physical, emotional, verbal, sexual and economic — against women.

Chowdhury lost her seat in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. She did not contest the 2014 polls, but served as a Congress Rajya Sabha member from 2012 to 2018. In 2019, she again contested from Khammam but was again defeated by Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) leader Nama Nageshwar Rao.

But Chowdhury had always been dogged by various rows from the beginning.

In 1993, a criminal case was registered against her for allegedly assaulting a traffic policeman for preventing her from crossing a road in Delhi. She was acquitted in the case in 2005.

She was also booked in a cheating case under various charges including some sections of SC/ST atrocities Act in 2014 for allegedly taking money from a Dalit Congress leader and not ensuring a poll ticket for him. The case was filed, during the tenure of the BRS government, by the Congress ticket aspirant’s wife Kalavathi, who alleged that her husband died because he was under pressure for raising the money. In 2025, she was however acquitted in the case for lack of evidence.

After lying low for some years, Chowdhury returned to news in June 2022, when she was accused of grabbing a police sub-inspector’s collar during the Telangana Congress’s protest in Hyderabad against the Enforcement Directorate’s questioning of Rahul Gandhi in the National Herald case. Though Chowdhury said that she had no intention of humiliating the police official and claimed that she “caught his collar” after losing her balance while being pushed around, the police filed a case against her.

Just two months after the Congress’s return to power in Telangana under A Revanth Reddy’s leadership, Chowdhury was in February 2024 elected again as the Rajya Sabha member from the state. “She is rejuvenated and filled with the same energy she used to have earlier,” her aide said.