(Image source from: outlookindia.com)

The constant friend of Telugu Desam Party (TDP) President and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu, Koteswara Rao Chekuri, who resides in Dallas is doing his best to make Babu retain his power in approaching elections.

The 40-year-old Chekuri’s association with the TDP goes back more than three decades. A young Chekuri remembers his family in Guntur district’s Vinukonda village rooting for the charismatic NTR (after he formed the TDP in 1982) because they believed the matinee idol-politician would bring good changes to their lives. He and TDP remained intertwined, though he was too little a child to understand.

The youngster grew up, graduated from the Regional Engineering College, Warangal, and did his higher studies at Alabama University in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He found a first-world job, married an IT graduate who works in a reputed firm, and now lives a cushy life that is part of any successful Great Telugu American Dream package.

To return the gratitude for his native land, he thought nothing would be a better way than through the TDP and Naidu, who is going to face parliamentary elections this summer.

His slogan - “state first, rest next”.

He booked a flight to his native state and worked his contacts to canvass for the party. “Don’t I have the duty to pay back to my state which has given me all these comforts? That’s precisely my connection with the TDP as well as Naidu and the people,” says the NRI-technocrat-TDP-worker, who regrets not being ‘home’ when it was split in 2014 and general elections were held. He wants to make up for it.

“I have formed party units in the U.S., named appropriately as NRI-TDP, to extend tech-based support to Naidu because of whose initiatives four lakh IT professionals from the state are working in the U.S.” Chekuri became more determined when the TDP lost the 2004 and 2009 elections, and the state was bifurcated in 2014. “I felt bad as a Telugu man, living in the far-off U.S., feeling helpless losing Hyderabad.”

He has set up a digital campaign theme to support Naidu this election: “Malli mere ravali” (You must return to power). It turned viral as the ‘flexes’ he designed with Naidu’s photo and catchy two-liners attracted the party cadre and candidates alike across 13 districts.

-Sangam Sowmya