Telangana Rashtra Samithi's (TRS) senior leader K Keshav Rao was Thursday unanimously elected as the head of the TRS Parliamentary Party.
At the TRS Parliamentary Party meeting presided over by party President and Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, Keshav Rao was also elected as the party leader in Rajya Sabha. Keshav Rao is considered a close aide of KCR and had accompanied the TRS chief in almost all his trips across the country as the latter attempted to forge a non-Congress, non-BJP Federal Front; a consortium of regional parties, ahead of the Lok Sabh polls.
Nama Nageswara Rao will be the TRS leader in the Lok Sabha. Nageswara Rao was elected from Khammam constituency in the recent elections. He quit the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) to join the TRS a few days before the Lok Sabha polls. The Khammam strongman is a senior leader, who enjoys a lot of political clout in his homeground.
The meeting also decided to nominate a deputy leader and a whip each in both houses of Parliament.
Chandrasekhar Rao discussed with the party MPs the strategy to be adopted during the Parliament session beginning on June 17.
The TRS won 9 out of 17 Lok Sabha seats in the state in recent elections.
KCR's daughter K Kavitha and his trusted confidant Vinod Kumar, both of whom were sitting MPs from Nizamabad and Karimnagar respectively, lost their seats to D Aravind and Bandi Sanjay Kumar of the BJP.
According to the plans of a Federal Front that KCR was drawing up, in case both Congress and BJP fell short of numbers and a consortium of regional parties seized power in Delhi, Kavitha and Vinod were his options to become Union Ministers.
In the 16th Lok Sabha, Jithender Reddy was the floor leader of the TRS but he defected to the BJP ahead of the polls, upset at being denied a ticket.
IANS inputs