Dr K A Paul has been a successful evangelist across the globe and is known for his speeches at least in 145 countries. It costs so much for people to dine with him or to have a photograph with him in some countries, including the US.

He used to travel in the worlds costliest and biggest aircraft which he owns. Wherever there is no airport, he used to travel in helicopters. In fact, he owned two helicopters, which were parked in his campus in Hyderabad in the 1990s.

He used to attract lakhs of people to his Christian meetings where he used to speak in English and others used to translate in the local languages. His whereabouts were not known until he had a rift with late Dr Y S Rajasekhar Reddy in early 2000.

It was then, perhaps for the first time, it was known that Paul is from Uttarandhra and he is Kilari Anand Paul, a Class XII passed but discontinued BA, before leaving for US and appearing to the world as Dr K A Paul, the popular evangelist.

After his fight with Dr YSR, Paul started Praja Shanti Party and contested in 2009, 2014 and 2019 general elections. As it was not a recognised party and he did not poll the required percentage of votes in the successive elections, his candidates were given different symbols.

However, in 2019, his party was registered with the Election Commission, and he was given the common symbol of “Helicopter”. But this too was a short-lived benefit for Paul as the EC deregistered the party and cancelled the common symbol.

In the Munugode Assembly by-election, Paul contested as an independent candidate with Ring as his symbol. All through the campaign, he did several funny things becoming a laughingstock before the people. Even on the polling day on Thursday, Paul gave a lot of fun to the voters by running from one polling booth to the other and even making funny statements like he is winning the by-election.