Nara Lokesh

Nara Lokesh (born 23 January 1983) is an Indian politician, who is the Information Technology and Communication & Industries Minister in the Government of Andhra Pradesh. He is the son of Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief and the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, 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. 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. In 2024 Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly election he was elected as MLA of Mangalagiri.

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 2024 Indian general election Telugu Desam Party along with Jana Sena Party and Bharatiya Janata Party got a landslide victory winning 164 seats out of which Telugu Desam Party won 135 seats.

Early life and Education
Nara Lokesh was born on 23 January 1983 in a Telugu family to Nara Chandrababu Naidu and his wife Nara Bhuvaneswari in Hyderabad, Telangana (then part of Andhra Pradesh). He has an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and Bachelor of Science with a specialization in Management Information Systems from Carnegie Mellon University.

Early political career
Lokesh started his Political Career in TDP. 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 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. 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. 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.

Development and welfare models
Lokesh is a trustee of NTR Trust for Healthcare, Education, Skills Enhancement and Disaster Management. Lokesh supervise the Trust's disaster response program that functions at 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.

Padayatra
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.

Later political career
In 2024 Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly election he was elected as MLA of Mangalagiri with a majority of 91,413 votes in the constituency which was never won by Telugu Desam Party for 39 years. This was the third highest majority in this assembly election.

Post Elections he was inducted in the Cabinet led by Nara Chandrababu Naidu as Cabinet Minister with departments of Human Resources Development, Information Technology, Electronics and Communication, Real Time Governance.

Awards and recognition
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.

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.

Personal life
In 2007, Lokesh married Nandamuri Brahmani, his first cousin and elder daughter of actor and politician, Nandamuri Balakrishna. The couple have a son, Nara Devaansh.