Telangana Neta Natter | Remember The Name — It’s Revanthanna

Big brother is watching you. For everyone familiar with that Orwellian term, a dystopian state of affairs is what comes to mind. But changing that perception is A. Revanth Reddy, for whom the most cherished title isn’t “Chief Minister” or even “Sir”— it’s simply “Revanthanna.” Before he occupied office in December 2023, he spent nearly 16 years in the Opposition, building his political identity as the approachable “anna” (elder brother) to party workers, supporters and government employees alike. The transition to power, however, briefly threatened that identity. Revanth revealed at a recent employees’ unions meeting that some officials in the Chief Minister’s Office frowned upon staff addressing him as “Revanthanna” during official meetings. They reportedly insisted that protocol demanded a more formal “Sir”. The Chief Minister wasn’t amused. He recalled warning those officials that they could even lose their jobs if they tried to impose such formality on employees. Titles, he implied, matter less than relationships. “I enjoy a brotherly bond with employees, and I want it to remain that way forever, irrespective of the position I hold,” Revanth said, making it clear that for him, “Revanthanna” is not just a nickname but a political identity, a responsibility of watching out for others.

How Jaju overtook rivals for top post

Senior IAS officer Sanjay Jaju’s return to the Telangana cadre after a 13-year innings at the Centre has sparked intense chatter in political and bureaucratic corridors, where the buzz is that Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy has played a calculated hand. The widespread belief that Jaju’s return was aimed at placing him in the Chief Secretary’s chair has turned out to be true. Until Jaju’s surprise entry, senior IAS officers Jayesh Ranjan and Vikas Raj were widely seen as the leading contenders for the state’s top bureaucratic post. But equations now have changed, closing the chapter on the long-held aspirations of both Jayesh and Vikas, who are due to retire in September 2027 and March 2028 respectively — well before Jaju, whose retirement is scheduled for February 2029. In Telangana’s bureaucracy, one unexpected transfer quietly rewrote the succession script.

Officials get a taste of traffic mess on Cyberabad

It’s the region of greater Hyderabad where bits and bytes make the economy hum, and makes the city one of the more sought-after places globally for tech investments and companies. The formation of the Cyberabad Municipal Corporation (CMC) only added to the buzz of even better days ahead for the tech zone and none seemed to be keener than those posted to the CMC from the GHMC and other wings of the government. One of the most looked forward to developments in the CMC is said to be the construction of a new head office in Khanamet adjacent to the Mundikunta lake. The current arrangement of the HoDs of various CMC wings sitting in an office in Manikonda, while their commissioner works from Madhapur from the National Academy of Construction campus, is not exactly a comfortable one, given the need of officers to make repeated trips through the now infamous Cyberabad traffic snarls for meetings with their commissioner. Many now recall the comfort while they were in the GHMC, when all it took was a walk across the corridor, or going to a different floor for a meeting.

Collector goes back to being a teacher

Once a teacher…. For Suryapet SP K. Narasimha, who was a teacher before becoming a cop, a random inspection visit to a school as part of checking on how the new academic year was taking off, was a chance to return to his past. Walking through the school, Narasimha paused at a classroom where eight standard students were in the middle of a geography lesson. As he began interacting with them, Narasimha slipped into his earlier role as a teacher, sketched a neat diagram on the blackboard and explained latitudes and longitudes with such clarity that both students and their teachers watched in admiration. With the students hanging on to his words, time slipped by and it was a full hour before the impromptu lesson by an impromptu teacher came to a close.

One airport and three claimants

There is a race on in Adilabad, for taking credit for a proposed airport. The Congress, BRS and the BJP are fighting with each other, making plans for crashlanding the hopes of the others to stake a claim for making the airport happen, and the fight is only getting tougher day by day. Piloting this fight for the BJP is its Adilabad MLA Payal Shankar who says it is the BJP-led Central government that approved the airport and an Indian Air Force training centre, and the state government’s role was limited to extending cooperation. For good measure, he has been adding that the then BRS government did not issue an NOC for the project. This take-off by Payal is being fought hard by former minister Jogu Ramanna who claims that it was the BRS government initiated airport plans, and that several Union ministers were met with in the past to push forward the proposals. Not wanting to be denied boarding on the issue, Adilabad Congress president Naresh Jadhav has claimed that it is the present government in the state which is providing land for the airport and the IAF centre. With the three sides claiming to be the ATCs who are making things happen, it remains to be seen whose flights of fancy will finally take off.

Why Azhar can’t speak Telugu fluently

If only learning a language came as easy as a flick off his legs while playing cricket, a stroke he played like none others could. For cricketer turned politician and minister Mohammed Azharuddin, in his own words, learning Telugu was a tough job. A wistful Azhar, when asked to speak in Telugu the other day, said, “After practising cricket, I used to attend special classes for learning Telugu. But that made me doze off and punishment used to follow with my teacher asking if I was there for learning or for sleeping.” The end result was that despite his best efforts, Azhar, raised in Hyderabad, never got around to speaking Telugu with any ease. But he did say he can read and even write in the language but is tongue tied when speaking in it. Clearly, even the best cricketer has some runs that can never be scored.

Contributions from L. Venkat Ram Reddy, Neeraj Kumar, Nabinder Bommala, Md Nizamuddin, Pillalamarri Srinivas