Meet the Telangana bureaucrat who keeps making his political ambitions public — again and again!

The constituency he is interested in is Kothagudem, and he recently reminded reporters of his GSR Trust, providing medical services, education, and employment to the youth. With elections just six months away, he has also promised a ₹2 crore trauma centre in the “new Kothagudem” he has promised to build.

Srinivasa Rao has made no bones about the fact that it is a BRS ticket he is interested in. And in a bid to cement his position, he even took swipes at the sitting MLA from Kothagudem, Vanama Venkateswara Rao, much to the chagrin of many BRS leaders. Reminding Venkeswara Rao of his words ahead of the previous election that it would be his last, Srinivasa Rao advised the MLA to retire and make way for others. No guesses who “others” would comprise.

Srinivasa Rao’s act of “stooping to conquer”, in November 2022, left no one in doubt about how badly he wanted to be in the good books of the chief minister. The occasion was to thank the chief minister for inaugurating eight medical colleges.

As the chief minister rose from his chair, Srinivasa Rao fell at his feet, sending a silent message to him to remember him at the time of the hustings. KCR gently raised him with his hands, but Srinivasa Rao continued to walk along with him for a while, bowing and with folded hands, and then for the second time he touched the chief minister’s feet.

Later, in December, when he visited Yadadri temple, he sparked another controversy by saying if the state had contained Covid-19, it was because of the grace of Lakshmi Narasimha Swamy of Yadadri temple. Earlier in the same month, he revealed his secular inclinations when he said it was Jesus Christ, not the efforts of the medical teams, who had helped the state combat Covid-19 effectively.

In April 2022, Srinivasa Rao visited Thimnetanda in Sujatanagar mandal of Bhadradri-Kothagudem district after which reports circulated that he had performed rituals for the fulfilment of his ambitions, mostly political.

Pictures of Srinivasa Rao in strange attire, sitting opposite Bhukya Vijayalaskhmi, a maatha, who is said to have been possessed, swarmed the internet.

With BRS looking to drop some of its sitting MLAs, it remains to be seen if KCR will pick this ardent devotee as the party candidate for his preferred constituency.