He was a member of the Akhil Bharatiya Itihas Sankalan Yojana, an affiliate of the Hindu-nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and the head of its Andhra Pradesh branch.
It was criticized by historians and seen as an effort by the administration of Narendra Modi to fill government institutions with individuals ideologically aligned with the RSS.
[2] A report in The Hindu stated that he has published over forty research papers in various journals and contributed to the Andhra Pradesh History Congress besides guiding eight PhD students.
[4] Rao was a member of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) during the first NDA government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party.
[8] Rao also served as head of the Andhra Pradesh chapter of Akhil Bharatiya Itihas Sankalan Yojana (ABISY), a subsidiary organisation of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
[16][15] Rao also announced plans to study whether Adam's Bridge was a man-made structure, but Arvind Jamkhedkar, his successor as ICHR chairperson, stated that they would not be pursued.
[25] An Outlook article noted that he was a scarcely cited scholar with no established track-record and that his blog-posts on different aspects of the subject, which frequently delineated the boundaries between myth and history and ran on a course of faith alone, have only caused concern among academics.