With assets worth Rs 190 crore, YS Chowdary in extended Cabinet

Telugu Desam Party’s YS Chowdary, who joined prime minister Narendra Modi’s council of ministers on Sunday, is popularly known as Sujana Chowdary. He is an industrialist and one of the richest MPs with assets of about Rs 190 crore.

Founder and chairman of Sujana Group of Companies, Chowdary is from the Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh and belongs to the powerful Kamma community, like his party chief and Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu. And he was Naidu’s choice when PM Modi asked the TDP chief to nominate a leader for the cabinet berth.

Born in 1961 in a well-educated family of government officers, Mr Chowdary has a Master’s degree in engineering. 

In 1986, he set up the Sujana Group of Companies. With over 6,000 employees and an annual turnover of $3 billion, the diversified group was ranked as one of the top 10 expanding groups of companies in India as of July, 2011.

Chowdary came closer to Naidu when the latter was the CM of united AP between 1995 and 2004. He was considered as one of the main fund-raisers for the party and Naidu had rewarded him with a Rajya Sabha ticket in 2010.