TDP MP Dr Chandra Sekhar Pemmasani sworn in as a minister of state on Sunday, was the richest candidate to contest the Lok Sabha polls. He declared the highest asset among all 8, 390 candidates at Rs 5,705 crore.
He was sworn in as minister of state. A medical doctor, he stuck with TDP through thick and thin and remained in the good books of party supremo N Chandrababu Naidu and no wonder, he has now secured a ministerial berth in the union cabinet.
Pemmasani defeated YSRCP’s Kilari Venkata Rosaiah, by a margin of over 3.4 lakh votes.Hailing from a rural area, he went on to become a teacher-physician at the Johns Hopkins University Sinai Hospital and also established his own firm UWorld (online learning and study resources platform), a fascinating journey.
The 48-year old doctor-entrepreneur-politician is a graduate of Osmania Medical College in Hyderabad and completed his post graduation (MD in Internal medicine) from Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, Pennsylvania, US, in 2005.Chandra Sekhar, with an interest in public service, has been working on behalf of the TDP’s NRI wing since 2010 to support several welfare programmes of the party. Though he wanted to contest the Lok Sabha polls from Narasaraopet segment in 2014, TDP allotted the ticket to R Sambasiva Rao due to political compulsions.
Among the ministers with Cabinet rank, Jyotiraditya M Scindia has the highest asset at Rs 484 crore. He has the sixth highest assets among the winning Lok Sabha MPs.
Pemmasani and Scindia were the only two to be sworn in as ministers among the top 10 richest winners in the Lok Sabha polls.
The BJP this time could not get a majority on its own in the recent Lok Sabha elections. However, the party-led alliance secured 293 seats out of 543. The majority mark in the lower house is 272.
(With agency inputs)
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