Former minister and senior TDP leader from Nizamabad district Mandava Venkateswara Rao has decided to join the TRS after a meeting with TRS supremo and Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao.
Speaking to mediapersons, Mandava said that the Chief Minister had asked him to join the ruling party to strengthen it in the Nizamabad district and parliamentary constituency.
He said that the TRS supremo, accompanied by party MLAs Maganti Gopinath, Puvvada Ajay Kumar and other TRS leaders, had visited his residence at Gayatri Hills in Banjara Hills on Friday afternoon and invited him to join the party.
"I have taken a decision to join the party as the Chief Minister personally invited me to," the former minister said.
With this, the TRS will get strengthened in Nizamabad and the TDP will lose even more of its cadre with many joining the ruling party.
Rao was elected five times to the Assembly on TDP tickets, and was a part of a Chandrababu Naidu cabinet in undivided Andhra Pradesh. After the State's bifurcation and the waning of the TDP in Telangana, Mandava had announced his retirement from active politics a couple of years ago. However he has decided to return to active politics considering his old friendship with KCR from their days in the TDP.