That Andhra Pradesh state IT and education minister Nara Lokesh is gradually emerging as the heir apparent of his father and chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu is being established gradually in the TDP and also the government.
The way the TDP ranks have been calling Lokesh the future chief minister of Andhra Pradesh on social media and the state government carrying his picture on the front page advertisements of the official programmes along with his father clearly indicated that Lokesh is emerging as No. 2.
But at least till he is officially declared as the successor of his father, Lokesh has to maintain some restraint. He cannot bypass his cabinet colleagues and poke his nose into their domains; otherwise, it will give a wrong impression to the people.
Lokesh is a minister for information technology and education. One can understand his recent tour to the US to attract investments from top IT companies like Microsoft and Adobe and seek their cooperation to develop the state as IT hub.
But it was surprising when Lokesh claimed credit for bringing in massive investment to the state from ArcelorMittal/Nippon Steel India for establishing an integrated steel project of 17.8 million tonnes capacity at Anakapalli.
Lokesh himself claimed on his social media handle that the project had materialised following a Zoom call to ArcelorMittal CEO Aditya Mittal in July.
“This meeting marked a key milestone, capping off extensive discussions that began with my initial outreach to AM/NS India's team,” he said.
The TDP media sought to highlight this achievement saying Lokesh brought an investment of Rs 1.4 lakh crore with just one Zoom call between Lokesh and Mittal.
One wonders in what capacity Lokesh had spoken with Mittal, because the industry portfolio is with T G Bharat. So, either Bharat or chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu should have spoken to Mittal to finalise the deal.
In fact, in May 2002 itself, Aditya Mittal had announced expansion of its pellet plant in Visakhapatnam at an investment of Rs 1,000 crore. An agreement was signed with the then Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy government, after a meeting between Jagan and Mittal at World Economic Forum summit at Davos earlier.
