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Meet new Goa Governor Ashok Gajapati Raju: Key TDP face who stood by Naidu through thick and thin

Former Union civil aviation minister Raju, who belongs to the erstwhile Vizianagaram royal family, joined hands with N T Rama Rao when he launched TDP in 1982-8

Former Union minister Pusapati Ashok Gajapati Raju has been appointed as the Governor of Goa. (Facebook)

HyderabadJuly 15, 2025 09:09 AM IST First published on: Jul 14, 2025 at 04:40 PM IST

Former Union minister Pusapati Ashok Gajapati Raju, who has been appointed as the Governor of Goa Monday, is one of the senior-most leaders of N Chandrababu Naidu-led TDP, a key ally of the BJP-led NDA.

Raju, 74, is a scion of the erstwhile Pusapati royal family of Vizianagaram in Andhra Pradesh. He started his political innings in 1977 when he joined the Janata Party, on whose ticket he won from the Vizianagaram Assembly seat in the 1978 polls.

He joined hands with N T Rama Rao when he launched the TDP in 1982-83, and has since represented the Vizianagaram constituency five more times – in 1983, 1985, 1989, 1994 and 2009.

A TDP Politburo member, Raju has also served as the TDP general secretary. He is close to Chandrababu Naidu, the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, who is said to “value his advice a lot”, according to party insiders.

In 2014, for the first time Raju contested from the Vizianagaram Lok Sabha seat, which he won. He was inducted as the civil aviation minister in the Narendra Modi Cabinet 1.0 from May 2014 to March 2018. He resigned along with another Union minister from the TDP, Y Satyanarayana Chowdary, after Naidu asked them to quit over the Centre not granting the special category status to Andhra Pradesh.

Earlier, Raju had been a minister of the N T Rama Rao-led Andhra government, holding the portfolios of excise and commercial taxes. Later, he also remained a key minister in the Naidu government, handling crucial portfolios like finance, revenue and legislative affairs. He stuck with Naidu through his difficult period after the TDP lost the polls in 2004.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Raju lost his Vizianagaram bastion to the YSRCP’s B Chandra Shekar. He did not contest in the 2024 polls and took a break from politics. His daughter Aditi Raju was then given a ticket by the TDP to contest from the Vizianagaram Assembly constituency, which she clinched to become a first-time MLA.