Prabhakara Rao Kona

Kona Prabhakar Rao was an Indian Politician. He was a member of the Indian National Congress and was elected four times as a Member of the Legislative Assembly from the Bapatla Assembly Constituency. He was born into a wealthy family in Andhra Pradesh. Right from childhood, he always wanted to become a social worker and actively participated in various freedom movements. Rao was an excellent sports player and thus became the tennis champion of Bombay University in 1938. He completed his law degree from the ILS Law College in Pune. In his early days, he directed many Telugu films, namely Nirdoshi and Drohi. His wife's name was Padmavathi Rao and they had a son Kona Raghupathi who got elected as MLA for Bapatla constituency in the future.

Looking at his career, he first became a member of the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly in 1967, then became the 8th Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry in 1983. In 1984, he became the Governor of Sikkim, followed by being the Governor of Maharashtra in 1985. He was one of the main reasons for diverting the Krishna River water to Bapatla for agricultural purposes. He died on 20 October 1990 at the National Institute of Medical Sciences, Hyderabad, due to cardio-respiratory failure.