Stage is set for another son-rise in south India as the ruling Telugu Desam Party in Andhra Pradesh has decided to field Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu’s only son in the elections to the State legislative Council.

Once elected to the Upper House his inclusion in the State cabinet will be a mere formality and it will seal his position as the heir to his father’s legacy.

A day after the party’s highest policy making body Politburo urged Chandrababu Naidu to nominate his son, Nara lokesh himself thanked the party for the decision.

“Heartfelt thanks to TDP Politburo for believing in my capabilities & proposing my name as MlC. It is an opportunity to serve people closely,” he tweeted.

Party sources say the proposal to field him in the legislative Council elections slated for March 20 came up because there was no vacancy in the 176 member legislative Assembly. “Making a member resign to make way for Nara lokesh could have created heart burn,” a senior party leader said.

The PB has left the final decision to Chandrababu.

Nara lokesh was active in politics for quite sometime and had campaigned extensively in the 2014 elections which brought the TDP to power in the truncated state of Andhra Pradesh. He also holds the key position of general secretary in TDP, which is headed by his father and was playing a major role in the formulating the party’s policies and programs.

The talk was in the air that 67-year old Chandrababu was grooming his son to succeed him as the head of the regional party founded by lokesh’s maternal grandfather NT Rama Rao.

At one stage before 2014 elections speculations were rife that NTR’s son and another popular film star N Balakrishna was also eyeing the leadership of the TDP. But the potential power struggle in the family seems to have been avoided by the fact that Nara lokesh is married to Balakrishna’s daughter Brahmini.

What is happening in Andhra Pradesh was an action replay of the developments in neighboring Telangana where K Taraka Rama Rao has already emerged as the second most powerful man in the state politics and the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samiti party after his father and Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao.

KCR has dropped sufficient hints that he was grooming Taraka Rama Rao as the future Chief Minister and has allotted him several key portfolios including Information Technology, Industry and Municipal Administration.

Unlike Nara lokesh, Taraka Rama Rao was likely to face a challenge from his cousin and another senior Minister T Harish Rao when the issue of a successor may come up.