Thaneeru Harish Rao is an Indian TRS politician who is the current Minister of State for Finance of Telangana from September 2019 and MLA from Siddipet constituency since 2004. Between 2014 and 2018, he served as Minister for Irrigation, Marketing & Legislative Affairs of Telangana.
Rao was born in Chintamadaka, Siddipet, and his native place is Thotapally in Velama Community Family, Karimnagar District to Satyanarayana Rao and Laxmi Bai. His father was a government employee. He pased his diploma from Government polytechnic in Hyderabad. He completed his graduation From Kakatiya University.

Harish Rao married to Srinitha Rao. They have two kids, a son and daughter.
Harish Rao started his political journey with Telangana Rashtra Samithi as youth leader. He was elected to assembly at the age of 32 from Siddipet. He raised his strong voice in assembly on various issues of Telangana region. Soon, he became key member of Telangana Rashtra Samithi and started working as Internal party strategist. He along with other MLA’s resigned as Congress party delayed the announcement of bifurcation of Telangana. He won as MLA with majority over 58000 though. In 2009, once again elected as MLA from Siddipet constituency with over 60000 majority. He elected as TRS party legislative member. Soon after, he and 10 other members from the TRS resigned from the Legislative Assembly in support of a separate State for Telangana. In July 2010, the High Court of Andhra Pradesh ordered the Election Commission of India to conduct by-polls in Siddipet and other towns across the Telangana region. Harish Rao contested again from Siddipet defeating opponent Babu Mohan (from the Telugu Desam Party) yet again. He played active political role by working at gross root level by building the party and uniting all other parties for the cause of Telangana.

Harish Rao has won again as the MLA for the Six consecutive time with a whopping majority of 1,20,650 votes in 2018 Elections. Harish Rao sworn in Minister of Irrigation on 2 June 2014. He started Mission Kakatiya program for restoring all the tanks and lakes in Telangana State, India. The Program was inaugurated on 12 March 2015 by chief minister Kalvakuntla Chandrashekar Rao. As part of this, government restored 45,000+ tanks and lakes.
Under Irrigation ministry, TRS government redesigned the project Pranahitha-chevella project on the ground that the original plan had too many environmental obstacles and had very low water storage provision — only about 16.5 tmc ft. After conducting a highly advanced Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) survey for a couple of months, the government separated the original component serving the Adilabad area as the Pranahitha project and renamed the rest as Kaleshwaram by redesigning the head works, storage capacity and the canal system based on the data of availability of water at different locations along the course of the Godavari and its tributaries. The Kaleshwaram project has provision for the storage of about 148 tmc ft with plans of utilising 180 tmc ft by lifting at least 2 tmc ft water every day for 90 flood days. The project is designed to irrigate 18.47 lakh acres uplands in the erstwhile districts of Karimnagar, Nizamabad, Warangal, Medak, Nalgonda and Ranga Reddy.

Harish Rao has close association with party cadre. Cadre often refer him as party trouble shooter. He played key in role during 2014 elections in all Telangana especially in United Medak district and other district in Northern Telangana. He also took the complete responsibility of By Election, 2014: Medak and Narayankhed By Elections, TRS party won with huge majority on both the occasions.