From flying the fighter jets on the Indian borders to the corridors of the highest office in the country – the Rashtrapati Bhavan — and then taking the path to the Legislatures, his journey is as diverse as it can be.
Shedding the Indian Air Force (IAF) uniform and donning Khadi to emerge as a people’s representative, Nalamada Uttam Kumar Reddy is perhaps a rare combination of guts and valour and a solid soldier tuned to strict discipline yet sitting pretty in the hearts of lakhs of people.
This former IAF officer now represents the Huzurnagar constituency, which has been his bastion for long. With a soldier-like built he may intimidate his opposition but seems to be quite dearer to his constituency people. Or else, they wouldn’t have sent him to the State Legislature or Parliament seven times consecutively.
This is surely a rare feat in present-day politics but the officer who flew Mig 21s and Mig 23s on the Indian borders feels his role of serving the country has changed to serve the people directly. The disciplined soldier in him continues to lead him to achieve bigger goals and drive him towards better roles.
An injury during an IAF operation on the Pakistan borders forced him out of his true love. But the graduate of the National Defence Academy (NDA) continued to love his uniform and chose to end up at the Rashtrapathi Bhavan serving as the Controller of Security, Protocol, Administration, and Foreign trips of the President of India. He served under presidents R. Venkatraman and Shankar Dayal Sharma.
However, his political entry was due to his close association with late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and he ended up with the Congress party. His first victory was in the 1999 elections from the Kodad constituency in the combined Nalgonda district and repeated the same in the 2004 elections. He later moved to Huzurnagar constituency from where he won in 2009 and served as a Minister for Housing in Kirankumar Reddy’s cabinet.
After the formation of Telangana, he won in 2014 and 2018 elections. When the party needed his services he resigned and contested as the Parliament member from Nalgonda constituency winning withstanding the TRS and BJP wave. In the 2023 Assembly elections, he went back to his Huzurnagar constituency and won with handsome margin.
Mr Reddy’s wife Padmavathi is a second-time MLA from the Kodad constituency that he represented earlier and perhaps they are one of the very few political couples in the country who sat in the same Assembly twice.
The former fighter pilot is also one of the longest serving presidents of the Pradesh Congress Committee anywhere in the country having served as the president of Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) from March 2015 to June 2021.
