Nara Lokesh

Nara Lokesh (born 23 January 1983) is an Indian politician.

He is the son of Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief N. Chandrababu Naidu.

He also served as Panchayat Raj, Rural development and IT and Communication minister through an MLC post.

He was severely criticized for not contesting the elections and becoming a minister in his father Chandrababu Naidu's cabinet.

In 2007, Lokesh married Brahmani, his first cousin on maternal side and daughter of actor and politician Nandamuri Balakrishna.

The couple has a son, Devansh.

Lokesh is food enthusiast and enjoys spending quality time with his young son whenever he is free.

He claimed in January 2013 that Rahul Gandhi and the Congress party derived the Direct Benefit Transfer System from a TDP proposal submitted to the central government.

In 2014, Lokesh became TDP's General Secretary, a member of the Politburo, the highest decision-making body of the party.

He managed the party, interacted with party workers and citizens, and helped set the party policies and strategy.

He was first elected as the Member of Legislative Council in 2017 .Though he never won a direct election, he held several key positions in both party and state of Andhra Pradesh.

His father N. Chandrababu Naidu, Chief minister of Andhra Pradesh made appointed him as a cabinet minister for IT, Panchayati Raj and Rural development in 2017 through.

Lokesh won the "Skoch Person of the Year" award in 2018, for his innovative use of technology while resolving issues related to drinking water supply, transparency in governance, and other activities under his Panchayati Raj portfolio.

In May 2018, he won the Business World magazine "Digital Leader of the Year" at the Businessworld Digital India summit in New Delhi.

The award recognises the best utilisation of technology in governance.

The same year, the Kalam Centre for Livable Planet Earth and Sustainable Development recognised Lokesh's efforts in the successful integration of technology in rural governance and awarded the innovation award to Andhra Pradesh in the Panchayat Raj and Rural Development category.

He was also awarded the Kalam Innovation in Governance Award in 2018.

In September 2018, Lokesh was invited to represent India at the World Economic Forum (WEF) Entrepreneurship Summit and Annual Meeting of World Champions in Tianjin, China.

In the following month, he became the only Indian politician to be nominated to the WEF's Network of Global Future Councils (NGFC), an interdisciplinary knowledge group that deliberates on agile governance in terms of emerging technologies and business models.

However, after great criticism for not contesting any election, he finally chose to contest as an MLA for Mangalagiri Assembly Constituency and lost to YSR Congress Party candidate Alla Ramakrishna Reddy in 2019 Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly elections.

Both he and his father, TDP chief, Chandrababu Naidu suffered a major political setback in the 2019 Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly Elections by winning only 23 seats out of the total 175 seats.

This was TDP's worst defeat ever in the history.

Lokesh has an MBA from Stanford University Graduate School of Business and Bachelor of Science with a specialization in Management Information Systems from Carnegie Mellon University.

Lokesh started his political career in TDP.

In 2019, he unsuccessfully contested from the Mangalgiri constituency narrowly losing by a margin of 5,337 votes to Alla Ramakrishna Reddy, a close aide of Y. S. Jagan Mohan Reddy.

Lokesh is credited with successfully managing the TDP party's membership drive that added five million members.

The digital technology used by the onboarding team – tablets, live data feeds and a real-time dashboard – was the first such use for enrolling and managing party members in the country.

Lokesh has been one of the Trustees of NTR Memorial Trust (popularly known as NTR Trust) on Healthcare, Education, Skills Enhancement and Disaster Management.

He oversees the disaster response program of the Trust that operates in times of natural calamities.

Each active member of the party will get a personal insurance cover of ₹2 lakh in case of a fatal accident, ₹2 lakh for permanent disability, ₹1 lakh for the partially disabled, and ₹50,000 in case of accidental injuries.

Lokesh-led party online membership drive fetched TDP 53+ lakh members.

On 27 January 2023, Lokesh started Yuva Galam Padayatra for youth of Andhra Pradesh for 400 days with a road-map to walk 4,000 kms from Kuppam to Ichchapuram.