Socially-inclusive Cabinet: Meet Jagan Reddy\'s 25 new Council of Ministers

Amaravati: In what the YSR Congress called a "socially-inclusive Cabinet," 25 new ministers were Saturday inducted into the Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy's Council of Ministers in Andhra Pradesh.

In line with his electoral promise, Jaganmohan Reddy gave Cabinet berths to seven legislators from the backward classes, five from the Scheduled Castes, one each from the Scheduled Tribes and Muslims, and four each from the Kapu and the Reddy communities. The Kamma community, which dominated the previous Chandrababu Naidu Cabinet, got just one berth now.

The Kshatriya and the Vysya communities also got one berth each. State Governor E S L Narasimhan administered the oath of office and secrecy to the new ministers at a glittering public function adjacent to the Secretariat at Velagapudi in capital Amaravati. The 26-member Cabinet, including the Chief Minister, has three women members; two from the Scheduled Castes and one from the Scheduled Tribes.

Jagan brought back senior leaders Botsa Satyanarayana, Pilli Subhash Chandra Bose, Pinipe Viswaroop, Mopidevi Venkata Ramana Rao, Balineni Srinivasa Reddy and Peddireddi Ramachandra Reddy, who worked as ministers in his late father Y S Rajasekhara Reddy's Cabinet in the erstwhile united Andhra Pradesh.

In fact, Balineni Srinivasa Reddy and Pilli Subhash Chandra Bose resigned from their Cabinet posts in the then Congress government and joined the YSRC floated by Jagan and have been sailing with him for the past eight years. Mopidevi Venkata Ramana Rao, while serving as minister in the then Kiran Kumar Reddy government, was arrested in connection with YSRC chief's disproportionate assets case in 2012 and jailed for several months.

Jagan subsequently joined Ramana Rao in jail. Ramana Rao, who belongs to the fishermen community, lost the recent Assembly election from Repalle constituency but got a Cabinet berth and will be nominated to the Legislative Council.

East Godavari, West Godavari and Krishna districts, where the YSRC bagged sizeable number of seats, got three Cabinet berths each. Kurnool, Chittoor, SPS Nellore, Prakasam, Guntur and Vizianagaram districts got two each while Anantapuramu, Kadapa, Visakhapatnam and Srikakulam got one each.

Meanwhile, G Srikanth Reddy, one of the legislators close to Jaganmohan Reddy, who could not be accommodated in the Cabinet because of caste calculations, has been appointed as the Government Chief Whip in the Assembly with a Cabinet rank.