Kadiyam Srihari

Kadiyam Srihari's birth took place on the 8th of July in the year 1952 at the Parvathagiri village of Warangal district in the Indian state of Telangana. His early education was in Warangal, and afterward, he did his B.Sc. at Arts and Science College, Warangal, and then an M.Sc. at Osmania University, Hyderabad in 1975. Before getting into the political arena, the first job that Srihari took was that of a bank manager at Syndicate Bank in Nizamabad and later on from 1977 to 1987, he worked as a junior lecturer and during these years, he was also holding the posts of District President and State Secretary of the Government Junior Lecturers Association in Andhra Pradesh.

In the month of February 1987, Srihari got into politics when N. T. Rama Rao reopened the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) for new members and invited him to contest for the Warangal Municipal Corporation's mayoral position. With a quick action, he got into the party and very actively participated in the organization through various positions, such as district president of TDP in Warangal (1987–1994) and the first chairman of the Kakatiya Urban Development Authority in 1988.

In the year 1994, Srihari was among the winners of the Andhra Pradesh Assembly elections representing the Station Ghanpur constituency and sealed this position of his through elections held in 1999. While the state was united as Andhra Pradesh, he was the Minister for several important departments, among them were Marketing, Social Welfare, Education, and Irrigation in the N. T. Rama Rao and later N. Chandrababu Naidu governments. He was defeated in the assembly election in 2004, but he won the Station Ghanpur seat again in a by-election in 2008.

The demand for a separate Telangana state was at its peak when Srihari, owing to his differences over statehood with the TDP, left the party in May 2013 and joined the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS). He was then elected to the Lok Sabha from the Warangal constituency in the 2014 general elections. Shortly after that, he quit the Lok Sabha seat in 2015 to become a member of the new Telangana Legislative Council and was immediately appointed Deputy Chief Minister of Telangana and Minister for Education on 25 January 2015, holding these positions until 12 December 2018.

Srihari was a member of the Telangana Legislative Council from 2015 until 2023. During the Telangana Legislative Assembly election of 2023, he ran as a candidate of the TRS (BRS) party from the Station Ghanpur Assembly constituency and won against the current officeholder. Right after that, on March 31, 2024, he moved over to the Indian National Congress, a change that indicated the realignment of the political landscape.

Kadiyam Srihari's entire life has been marked by a series of accolades, public office, legislative experience, ministerial leadership, and political influence on the development of Telangana.