Damacharla earned fame as ‘Mr Dependable’

Ongole: Damacharla Janardhana Rao, fondly called DJ by his followers, has been elected as Ongole MLA for the second time. He is a king slayer in politics, for almost ending the political career of his opponent by gaining the confidence of the public as Mr Dependable.

Janardhana Rao is an engineer by education from the prestigious PES Institute of Technology in Bengaluru. He is the grandson of the former minister of Andhra Pradesh, Damacharla Anjaneyulu. He started his political journey from the Kondapi Assembly constituency after the death of his grandfather. As the delimitation of Assembly constituency made Kondapi a reserved constituency, he shifted his political base from Kondapi to Ongole.

He contested the 2012 byelection against Balineni Srinivasa Reddy, who had been an MLA for multiple times, and relative of YS family. However, his maiden attempt was unsuccessful but he marshalled all his forces to defeat Balineni in 2014 to enter the Legislative Assembly for the first time. Though he lost the election to Balineni in 2019, Damacharla defeated him again in the recent elections.

The Ongole town has been waiting for the development for decades. As the migration to the the town has increased, several slums came up in the suburbs, and are still waiting for the proper infrastructure. There are several demands from the locals but they remain dreams for years.

Damacharla Janardhana Rao released a local manifesto in 2014 and took up development works worth Rs 2,600 crore, like widening roads, arranging dividers, lighting, and constructing electrical substations and drainages. The drinking water pipeline works from Gundlakamma were just about 2 km due while the TIDCO housing project and the bridge over the stream on Kothapatnam road are more than 70 per cent and 80 per cent complete respectively. The then TDP government had issued the financial department approvals too for the modernisation of Pothuraju Kalva, but the works haven’t started yet.

Being the Ongole MLA now, Janardhana Rao’s focus is to complete the pending works from his earlier term, and to improve the drainage, drinking water and sanitation, and housing facilities. He received a nod for the underground drainage work proposals from the party’s high command already, and formal processing in the government is due to take up the works.