YSR expands Cabinet, gets 17 new faces

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy expanded the state Cabinet today, raising its strength to 41. Seventeen new ministers were administered the oath of office this morning.

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy expanded the state Cabinet today, raising its strength to 41. Seventeen new ministers were administered the oath of office this morning.

However, the development took place amid high drama as a senior MLA resigned from the party, miffed at not being included in the expanded Cabinet. Almost half of the new members are from the Telangana region.

After the new ministers were announced, MLA P Shankar Rao submitted his resignation to the Chief Minister. “I am the senior-most legislator in the government. I have the required experience and commitment for the job. I fulfil all the requisites that are needed and I should have been made a Minister,” he said. Rao is a Dalit leader from the Shadnagar constituency.

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Conspicuous by his absence was another former Minister, P Janardhan Reddy. A party dissident, Reddy and the Chief Minister rarely see eye to eye. In Karimnagar, supporters of D Sridhar Babu protested also against his exclusion.

The new ministers include just one woman, G Arunakumari from Chittoor. The other sworn in by Governer Rameshwar Thakur were M Buddha Prasad, S Chandrasekhar, R Changa Reddy, G Chinna Reddy, D Raja Narasimham, D Damodar Reddy, M Hanumantha Rao, M Mukesh Gaud, T Jeevan Reddy, A Ramanarayana Reddy, J Ratnakar Rao, P Subhash Chandra Bose, K Venkata Krishna Reddy, M Venkat Ramana Rao, V Venkatewsara Rao and Maganti Babu.

This is the first Cabinet expansion for the present government, which completed three years in power.