Hyderabad, June 29 (UNI) Senior Congress party leader and former Rajya Sabha member Dharmapuri Srinivas (DS) passed away at his residence in Jubilee Hills in the early hours of Saturday.
He was 76 and is survived by his two sons, Sanjay, who served as the Mayor of Nizamabad city, and Arvind, who is the Nizamabad BJP MP.
According to family sources, Srinivas had been suffering from illness for some time and breathed his last at 0300 hours due to a heart attack. His body is currently kept at his house in Jubilee Hills and will be moved to his native place, Pragathinagar, Nizamabad. The funeral will be held on Sunday.
Srinivas served as a minister and president of the Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) in united Andhra Pradesh. He served as a minister in 2004 and 2009 and was very close to the then Chief Minister YS Rajasekhar Reddy. The Congress party came to power in the state during his tenure as PCC president. He was affectionately known as DS.
Born on September 27, 1948, in Nizamabad, DS completed his degree at Nizam College. He entered politics as a student union leader and worked in NSUI and Yuvajana Congress. He won as an MLA thrice, first contesting the election in 1989 for the Nizamabad Urban Constituency.
He later won the 2004 and 2009 assembly elections. He served as Rural Development and I&PR Minister from 1989 to 1994 and as Higher Education and Urban Land Ceiling Minister from 2004 to 2008. In 2004, he played a key role in aligning with the then-TRS.
He served as an MLC from 2013 to 2015. After the formation of Telangana, he served as the opposition leader of the council. He resigned from the Congress party in 2015 after not getting an opportunity to become an MLC for the second time and later joined BRS.
He worked as an Adviser on Inter-State affairs for the State Government and served as a BRS Rajya Sabha member from 2016 to 2022. He later resigned from the party and rejoined Congress, but stayed away from politics due to ill health.
