Ponnala Lakshmaiah is an Indian politician with a background in mechanical engineering. He represented the Jangaon constituency in the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly, served as minister for information technology and communications, and became the first president of the Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee in 2014.
Background
Ponnala Lakshmaiah was born on 15 February 1944 in Quilashahpur, a village in the Telangana region of Warangal district. At the time the village lay within Hyderabad State, a princely state in British India. He was born into a Telugu-speaking family of Ponnala Radhamma and Ponnala Rama Kishtaiah.
Hyderabad State was ruled by the Nizam until its integration into the Indian Union in 1948. Its Telangana region, largely rural in character, later became the centre of the statehood movement that led to the creation of Telangana in 2014, the political context in which the final phase of his public career unfolded.
Education
Ponnala Lakshmaiah earned a Master of Science degree in mechanical engineering from Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma, in 1969. Accounts of his studies state that he completed the programme in eleven months and received a financial assistantship from the university that year.
Oklahoma State University was founded in 1890 as Oklahoma's land-grant agricultural and mechanical college and had been known by its present name since 1957. Its engineering programmes belonged to the land-grant tradition, which combined technical instruction with applied research for agriculture and industry.
In later years the university recognised him with induction into its Hall of Fame and with an alumni award from its School of Business.
After completing his master's degree, Ponnala Lakshmaiah worked in the United States from 1969 to 1978. On his return to India he joined the Indian National Congress, and he later described his association with the party as lasting about forty years.
Having come into contact with the World Bank and its programmes for developing countries, he was attracted by rural development projects in India and returned to work on rural employment in the region of his birthplace. The World Bank had been established in 1944 to finance reconstruction and later development projects. His first project involved improvements in poultry breeding, which helped employ thousands of people with little formal education, and he also promoted the development of the dairy industry.
In 1985 he organised a public protest against atrocities committed by Telugu Desam Party workers against Harijans in Karamchedu, Guntur district, and against what he regarded as the indifferent attitude of the state government. The Telugu Desam Party, founded in 1982 under N. T. Rama Rao, had formed the government of Andhra Pradesh in 1983. In 1992, at the Congress plenary session in Tirupati, he handled the foreign delegates, including prime ministers of neighbouring countries.
In 1986 he launched a protest under the name Samagra Pochampad Karyacharana Samithi and worked with district leaders to modify an irrigation scheme for a chronically drought-prone area. Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao laid the foundation stone of the project on 30 June 1993, and the scheme was under execution as part of the Jalayagnam programme at a cost of Rs 30 billion.
He was first elected to the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly from Jangaon in 1989 and was later elected for three further consecutive terms from the same constituency. He held the irrigation portfolio in the cabinet of Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy and remained a minister under his successor, Konijeti Rosaiah. In the government of Kiran Kumar Reddy, formed in November 2010, he held the information technology and communications portfolio until the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh in 2014.
He founded the Ponnala Foundation, which, he has said, gives awards each year to mathematics students in memory of the Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, to promote the subject among children.
Achievements
He was inducted into the Hall of Fame of Oklahoma State University, whose president publicly described him as among the finest graduates in the university's history.
In 1986 he led a protest under the Samagra Pochampad Karyacharana Samithi and worked with district leaders to revise an irrigation scheme benefiting a chronically drought-prone area. The project received its foundation stone from Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao on 30 June 1993.
At the 1992 Congress plenary session in Tirupati, he successfully handled foreign delegates, including prime ministers of neighbouring countries.
Politics
Ponnala Lakshmaiah was a politician associated with the Indian National Congress from 1980 until his resignation in October 2023, after which he joined the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS). His public statements centred on rural development, and when he left the Congress he criticised the party leadership for neglecting Backward Class (BC) leaders and for irregularities in candidate selection before the 2023 Telangana Assembly election.
The Indian National Congress, founded in 1885, dominated national politics in the decades after Indian independence and advocated a broad, centrist programme of social welfare, secularism and planned economic development. In Andhra Pradesh the party contended with regional movements and rival parties, including the Telugu Desam Party, founded in 1982, which governed the state from 1983. The Telangana statehood movement, which sought a separate state from the Telugu-speaking regions of Andhra Pradesh, was ultimately accommodated when Congress-led national government enacted the reorganisation of the state in 2014.
Ponnala Lakshmaiah was named the first president of the Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee, the party's state unit for the new region, on 11 March 2014, and he held the post until 2 March 2015. The BRS, which grew out of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi founded in 2001 to campaign for a separate Telangana, governed the state after 2014. He joined the BRS at a public meeting in Jangaon on 16 October 2023, in the presence of its leader K. Chandrashekar Rao, days after leaving the Congress.
Connections
Ponnala Lakshmaiah is married to Ponnala Arunadevi and has two children.
Spouse:
Ponnala Arunadevi
Parent:
Ponnala Radhamma
Parent:
P. Rama Kishtaiah
References
Ponnala Lakshmaiah - Wikipedia
Encyclopedia article covering his birth, engineering education, ministerial posts, Telangana Congress presidency and move to the BRS.
Cong names PCC chiefs for Telangana
Report that the All India Congress Committee named him president of the first Pradesh Congress Committee for Telangana.
