K S Rao, a strong advocate of united Andhra, enters Council of Ministers

NEW DELHI: Businessman-turned-politician KavuriSambasivaRao, who had almost resigned his LokSabha seat last October upset over being ignored in the previous Cabinet reshuffle, makes an entry into the Union Council of Ministers after almost three decades of Parliamentary run.

69-year-old Rao, a strong advocate of united Andhra, is opposed to separate Telangana over which the state has been seeing a lot of tensions.

In October last, the five-time MP was almost sure that the Congress leadership will induct him in the Cabinet when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh went for a reshuffle of his Council of Ministers. Rao now represents Eluru seat.

But the leadership's decision to exclude him from the ministry upset Rao who then made his displeasure public and announced his decision to quit from Lok Sabha. However, the leadership managed to calm him down.

A loyal Congressman, Rao is presently a member of the crucial Congress Coordination Committee in Andhra Pradesh, set up in 2010 to ensure better coordination between the party and the state government headed by N Kiran Kumar Reddy.

A maverick, he sided with veteran Congress leaders N D Tiwari and Arjun Singh who floated Congress (Tiwari) in 1995 following differences with the then Prime Minister and AICC President P V Narasimha Rao.

Born on October 2, 1943 in Dosapadu in Krishna district of Andhra, Rao got his engineering degree from Regional Engineering College in Warangal.

Rao, who has business interests in real estate and construction, was first elected as an MP in 1984 and was re-elected in 1989, 1998, 2004 and 2009. He had represented Machilipatnam seat earlier.