Jagan Reddy's Cabinet Reshuffle Gets Marred With Dissent and Angry Leaders
Jagan Reddy's Cabinet Reshuffle Gets Marred With Dissent and Angry Leaders
Though Jagan had indicated that except for two or three senior colleagues, all others will have to relinquish their posts, he has retained 11 out of the 24-member team

What began with Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Jaganmohan Reddy seeking resignations en masse from all his cabinet colleagues has now turned into a reshuffle of his first-ever cabinet, but the whole exercise is not a complete overhaul.

It would be interesting to recall that N T Rama Rao ‘kicked out’ all his 31 colleagues in 1989 while he recast the new team with all new faces and the size of the team was shrunken to 23. In the Assembly elections that ensued about nine months later, the TDP under NTR lost power.

Though Jagan had indicated that except for two or three senior colleagues, owing to their experience, all others will have to relinquish their posts, he has retained 11 out of the 24-member team. In fact, soon after assuming the office, Jagan had clearly told all his colleagues that they would have to make way for other legislators in the ministerial positions after a two-and-a-half-year term in office. This was agreed upon by all of them in unison before they were sworn in.

However, when it came to shuffling the pack, the number of ‘middle drops’ came down drastically with multiple socio-political equations and the influence of individual ministers in different districts. The Chief Minister re-inducted 11 members from the erstwhile cabinet and chose 14 new faces. However, some of those brought in, including Dharmana Prasada Rao, have an elaborate legislative experience, coupled with their skin in the game of governance for many years.

Lok Sabha constituencies into districts

In fact, the Jaganmohan Reddy Government has bifurcated the number of districts from the existing 13 to 26, almost aligning every district with the contours of 25 Lok Sabha constituencies. The government has created an exclusive district combining all the hilly regions, predominantly inhabited by various tribal groups, into one district. This is in addition to the 25, thus jacking up the number of districts to 26. These new districts came into being in the first week of April 2022 in sync with Telugu New Year’s Day, Ugadi.

Jagan scored a brownie point with people by christening the Vijayawada Lok Sabha constituency district after the legendary N T Rama Rao, the founder of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP). The move is politically correct and a blatant attempt to embarrass the main Opposition.

Against this background, everyone expected that the rejigged Cabinet would accommodate one berth to an MLA from each of all the districts, barring one. For, the sanctioned size of the Cabinet in Andhra Pradesh is 25.

However, taking everyone by surprise, the Chief Minister ‘ignored’ very important districts like Visakhapatnam, Eluru, NTR, Guntur, Tirupati, and so on. As many as eight districts have gone unrepresented in the new Cabinet.

Not everything is hunky-dory

The first woman Home Minister in the bifurcated Andhra Pradesh, Ms Mekathoti Sucharita, was enraged by the decision to drop her from the Cabinet and may offer to quit as the Member of the Legislative Assembly.

Balineni Srinivasa Reddy, a senior member of the erstwhile cabinet, also expressed his indignation over his being stripped of the cabinet berth. However, senior YSR Congress functionaries, under the aegis of Sajjala Ramakrishna Reddy, Advisor to the State Government, reached out to the sulking former minister and are trying to placate the frayed tempers. It is incidental that Srinivasa Reddy is distantly related to Chief Minister Jaganmohan Reddy.

Several seniors, who missed the bus, too have not hidden their emotions. Kolusu Parthasarathy, Pinnelli Ramakrishna Reddy, and a few others made no bones about their exasperation.

Social engineering

While some of those who got an extended term in Jagan’s Cabinet were lucky enough to have caste equations weighing heavily in their favour, some others retained their jobs in the ‘Team Jagan’ by virtue of their seniority.

The attention over the brewing dissidence is, however, deflected by amplifying the ‘social engineering’ part of the cabinet rejig. Jaganmohan Reddy has drastically cut down on the number of forward caste people in his cabinet and brought it down to 8 from 11. He filled the remaining 17 berths with elected representatives drawn from the Backward Classes (BC), Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST) and Minorities.

As if to completely nullify the influence of the opposition TDP on the BCs, a section that remained a solid vote bank for close to three and a half decades, the Chief Minister brought in 10 BC faces, five SC ministers, one each from ST and Minority communities.

The Chief Minister also factored in the caste and sub-caste equations based on their political influence, numerical strength and socio-economic positioning while recasting his team.

Conspicuous in the new Cabinet is the absence of at least one representative from the enterprising Kamma community, a caste that dominates the Telugu Desam Party. Kodali Sri Venkateswara Rao alias Nani, the lone Kamma minister and a bitter critic of Chandrababu Naidu, in the outgoing cabinet is given the position of the Chairman of the yet-to-be-created State Development Board with a Cabinet rank. Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vysyas, the prominent upper castes, were given alternative posts equivalent to a Cabinet minister, as they could not be accommodated in the actual cabinet.

Five Deputy Chief Ministers

The Chief Minister, who created a sensation by bestowing the position of Deputy Chief Minister to five ministers, in the first round, continued the same even this time, diligently balancing the caste equations. This care was taken even in the distribution of portfolios.

Jaganmohan Reddy, who had told his outgoing cabinet colleagues that they would all get back to the ministerial positions once they ensured that the party was voted back to power, will now focus on fortifying the party organisation and bucking it up for the next elections. He will deploy the senior leaders who had to exit from the cabinet and will be drafted for party work in important policy-making positions.

The author is an independent journalist. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.

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