Chandru accepted the ticket offered by the ruling Janata Party to contest the assembly elections from Gauribidanur. This followed after actors Anant Nag and Shankar Nag denied. Chandru won the seat by a margin of over 6,600 votes. Speaking about an incident to "The Times of India" of his stint as the Member of the Legislative Assembly, he said that the officers who assisted him when he "decided to get tough with the sand-mining mafia controlled by a liquor baron in his constituency" were transferred, and when he complained to Chief Minister Ramakrishna Hegde, he was to told to "get practical". Following the term, he contested unsuccessfully from the Chikballapur constituency in the 1989 Lok Sabha elections. His party merged with two other parties at the time to become Janata Dal.