Chandrababu drops 5 ministers, to induct son Nara Lokesh into Cabinet
Hyderabad: Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu will be inducting 11 ministers on Sunday, including his son Nara Lokesh. He will be dropping five ministers. He had secured the resignations of all 19 ministers at an informal Cabinet meet on Saturday night.
Mr Naidu will be forwarding the letters to the Governor with his recommendations on which of the letters are to be accepted. Ministers Bojjala Gopalakrishna Reddy, Palle Raghunatha Reddy, Ravela Kishore Babu, Peethala Sujatha and Kimidi Mrinalini will be dropped.
Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan will be administering oath of office and secrecy to the ministers at a function on the lawns of the new Assembly building complex in Velagapudi. This is the first reshuffle of the Cabinet which was sworn-in on June 8, 2014.
The CM heads a 20-member Cabinet including himself and there are six vacancies against the cap of 26. After dropping the five ministers, he has decided to induct 11.
The exercise is being carried out with an eye on the 2019 elections as well as giving more preference to the Reddy community, and greater representation to BCs. His plan to induct a Muslim minister, apparently, did not fructify.
Both Mr Naidu and Mr Lokesh had decided to provide more representation to MLAs who had defected from the YSRC in order to take on Opposition leader Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy in Reddy-dominated Rayala-seema. Kadapa district will be represented in the Cabinet for the first time with the induction of Mr C. Adinarayana Reddy from Jammalamadugu, who was one of the first to defect from the TD.
With the sudden demise of Bhuma Nagi Reddy, a likely choice, his daughter Bhuma Akhila Priya Reddy will be joining the Cabinet. Bobbili MLA Sujay Krishna Ranga Rao, the scion of the Bobbili kingdom, will be inducted in the Cabinet, against the wishes of Union civil aviation minister P. Ashok Gajapathi Raju of the Vizianagaram kingdom. The Vizianagaram kings had defeated the Bobbili kings with the help of the French 200 years ago.
Mr Naidu has already told his friend forest minister Bojjala Gopalakrishna Reddy that he would be dropped due to his poor health. The move to drop Mr Ravela Kishore Babu and Ms Pithala Sujatha was on the cards for some time.
Housing minister Kimidi Mrinalini is being dropped to accommodate AP TD president Kimidi Kala Venkata Rao, a former home minister in the N.T. Rama Rao Cabinet.
