For Minister Peetala Sujatha, hailing from Veeravasaram in West Godavari district, the journey from teaching to politics is quite exciting and sheer accidental. When the 41-year-old government school teacher from Scheduled Castes, sought to seek her fortunes in the 2004 Assembly polls from the TDP, nobody had any inkling of her meteoric rise in politics. A bachelor of degree in science with a B.Ed., Ms. Sujatha was said to have approached then TDP district president and former Minister Kothapalli Subbarayudu in the run up to the 2004 elections seeking his favour for the TDP ticket for Achanta (SC reserved at that time) only to be declined.
Later, it became the turn of Mr. Subbarayudu to keep track of and present her before the TDP chief N. Chandrababu Naidu. When Mr. Naidu was toying with the idea of replacing then sitting MLA Jawaharvathi in Achanta, luck smiled on Ms. Sujatha. She survived the YSR wave and got elected from Achanta in 2004 with an impressive majority. She became displaced after her native constituency became general in the 2009 general elections in the delimitation process and spent in hibernation for full five years.
At a time when a good number of fellow-MLAs were deserting the party, she remained as a loyal TDP worker. In the current elections, she emerged a natural choice when the party was on the lookout for fielding a strong woman candidate to counter the YSRC’s B. Devi Priya.Ms. Sujatha’s induction in the Cabinet is viewed as a gift presented by the Chief Minister to the district in return for the latter’s letting all the 15 Assembly segments and three Lok Sabha seats enter the TDP en masse.
