Pawan Kalyan: PM Modi calls him 'aandhi' as he garners tsunami of votes for NDA in Andhra

Actor-politician Pawan Kalyan, whom Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently described as "not just a breeze but a storm" ("pawan nahi hai, aandhi hai"), actually lived up to that billing in the just-concluded Andhra Pradesh elections.

Kalyan stitched the NDA alliance of TDP, BJP and Janasena together, which emerged triumphant with a landslide victory, sweeping up 164 of 175 assembly seats in the state and 21 of 25 Lok Sabha seats. Following the victory, he was sworn-in as a minister on Wednesday in the presence of the prime minister, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and several other union ministers.

Kalyan is expected to be entrusted with the Deputy Chief Minister's post -- as mentioned by Shah in his post on social media platform X, congratulating him.


"Congratulations to Andhra Pradesh...Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan..." said Shah.

Pawan Kalyan, the 55-year-old Janasena founder, began his political journey with his older brother Chiranjeevi who founded the Praja Rajyam party in 2008. He handled Praja Rajyam's youth wing 'Yuvarajyam' but the party failed at the hustings in the 2009 elections.

The 2009 polls witnessed a three-way contest between the Y S Rajasekhar Reddy-led Congress, N Chandrababu Naidu's TDP and Chiranjeevi-led Praja Rajyam. However, Kalyan did not remain very active politically, especially after Chiranjeevi merged Praja Rajyam with the Congress. Kalyan later founded the Janasena party in 2014.

Though he did not contest the 2014 elections, he extended outside support to the NDA alliance of TDP and BJP, providing some tailwind to their triumph. The Tollywood actor contested the 2019 elections but faced a debacle, losing all the seats except one, the Razole assembly seat. In the 2024 polls, however, he played a key role, garnering a tsunami of votes for the NDA alliance in the state.