With Jaya Prada joining BJP, party leaders of Telugu states hope to bring her for campaigning

HYDERABAD: It’s been a roller-coaster ride for actress Jaya Prada in politics. The actress who started off as a Telugu film heroine dominating the scene along with Sridevi some decades ago, changed her political course on Tuesday joining the BJP. In the last 25 years of her political career, she has changed several parties.
Hailing from Rajahmundry in Andhra Pradesh, she began her political career with the Telugu Desam Party in 1994 as she had done several films alongside TDP founder-president N T Rama Rao.After N Chandrababu Naidu took over as chief minister, he nominated her to the Rajya Sabha and she served a term from 1996-2002.
While in the TDP, Jaya Prada had a running feud with Renuka Chowdhary who was also in the TDP then. When it became clear that she was being ignored in the TDP, Jaya Prada looked for greener pastures beyond the boundaries of the state.
The Samajwadi Party led by Mulayam Singh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh got Jaya Prada into its party fold. She contested the Rampur Lok Sabha seat from that state on the SP ticket and won in 2004. In the 2009 elections, she got re-elected from the same constituency. With differences sprouting between SP leader Amar Singh and Mulayam Singh Yadav, Jaya Prada had to make a choice on who she would sail with. She preferred to join the new party that Amar Singh floated but that proved to be a futile exercise.
Jaya Pradathen joined the Rashtriya Janata Dal, led by Ajit Singh in UP, making the move along with Amar Singh. In the 2014 elections she was fielded as Lok Sabha candidate from Bijnor seat but lost.
For some time, there was speculation that Jaya Prada would join back the Telugu Desam Party when she met Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu in Amaravati in November 2015. It turned out that she had met Naidu only to invite him for her son Siddharth’s wedding that month in Hyderabad.
In 2013, Jaya Pradahad met Congress president Sonia Gandhi and that also led to speculation that she would meet join the party. She had even announced that she was interested in getting back to her home state Andhra Pradesh and would continue with her political career from there. She was keen on returning to AP politics but nothing concrete materialised. But with her joining the BJP, party leaders in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh are hoping that she would campaign for party candidates here.
On Tuesday, she was welcomed into the BJP at the party’s headquarters in Delhi and is likely to be fielded from Rampur seat against the Samajwadi Party’s Azam Khan. “I am working with a brave leader in whose hands the country is safe,” she said about Prime Minister Narendra Modi when she joined the BJP.