The number of seats won by JSP is seen as a major milestone for Kalyan who struggled for a long time to make a mark in politics. After the poll results, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had introduced Kalyan in a meeting of NDA MPs, saying, “Yeh Pawan nahi hai, aandhi hai (he is not air, but a storm).”
Kalyan stitched the NDA alliance of TDP, BJP and Janasena together, which won with a landslide victory, sweeping up 164 of 175 assembly seats in the state and 21 of 25 Lok Sabha seats.
Pawan Kalyan, the 55-year-old Janasena founder, began his political journey with his older brother Chiranjeevi who founded the Praja Rajyam party in 2008. He handled Praja Rajyam’s youth wing ‘Yuvarajyam’ but the party failed at the hustings in the 2009 elections.
The 2009 polls witnessed a three-way contest between the Y S Rajasekhar Reddy-led Congress, N Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP and Chiranjeevi-led Praja Rajyam. However, Kalyan did not remain very active politically, especially after Chiranjeevi merged Praja Rajyam with the Congress. Kalyan later founded the Janasena party in 2014.
Though he did not contest the 2014 elections, he extended outside support to the NDA alliance of TDP and BJP, providing some tailwind to their triumph. The Tollywood actor contested the 2019 elections but faced a debacle, losing all the seats except one, the Razole assembly seat. In the 2024 polls, however, he played a key role, garnering a tsunami of votes for the NDA alliance in the state.Kalyan, whose original name is Konidela Kalyan Babu, is a mega star in Telugu film industry. He is a younger brother of film star Chiranjeevi, who has also been a Union minister. He debuted with the film “Akkada Ammayi Ikkada Abbayi” in 1996, and has delivered several blockbusters since then. A black belt in karate, he is called a “power star” by his fans and is known for his action sequences and roles of a rebel and a vigilante.
