Ex-NDA minister and Naidu's man Friday to join Modi cabinet

Veteran BJP leader and Secunderabad MP Bandaru Dattatreya and TDP’s Rajya Sabha member and Andhra Pradesh state representative in New Delhi, Y Satyanarayana Chaudhary, are set to be inducted into Prime Minister Narendra Modi cabinet on Sunday.

Dattatreya, fondly addressed as “Dattanna”, won the Secunderabad seat by trouncing the Congress MP Anjan Yadav in 2014. Dattatreya has been a minister of state in urban affairs and Railways in the Atal Behari Vajpayee cabinet till 2004.

Induction of Dattatreya has fulfilled the demand of Telangana forces who were upset on the elevation of Venkaiah Naidu who belongs to Nellore in AP. Dattatreya was instrumental in passing the 1992 Kakinada resolution for a separate Telangana .
Y S Chaudhary, popularly known as Sujana Chowdhary, has been close associate and fund raiser for the TDP and has been handpicked by Chandrababu Naidu to join the Narendra Modi’s Cabinet. Naidu, who is flying in a special flight to Delhi to attend the first cabinet expansion of NDA government, said he expected a third berth for the party in view of its strength of 15 Lok Sabha and 6 Rajya Sabha seats.

The TDP is already represented in the Union cabinet by Ashok Gajapathi Raju, the party MP from Vizianagaram as the Civil Aviation Minister.

Yelamanchili Satyanarayana Chaudhary is an industrialist who was nominated to the Rajya Sabha in June 2010. Son of a retired IPS officer, Y S Chowdary is a post-graduate engineer. He had financed the TDP during the elections and also contributed generously towards the party funds for operations between 2004 and 2014.