KCR bond helps Karimnagar district bag four ministerial berths

HYDERABAD: Karimnagar, the district which holds chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao’s affinity, clinched as many as four ministerial berths of the total 17 in the council of ministers. The chief minister, though he has a farmhouse and represents Gajwel assembly seat, has a special bonding with Karimnagar district. Whenever he launches a campaign or a major scheme, he begins it from Karimnagar district.
After cabinet reshuffle, ministers KT Rama Rao, Eatala Rajender Reddy, Koppula Eshwar and Gangula Kamalakar are representing the erstwhile Karimnagar district.While two ministers have already been there in the cabinet, KTR and Kamalakar took oath as ministers in the expansion on Sunday. In the previous government, there were four ministers — Mahmood Ali, Srinivas Yadav, T Padma Rao and Nayani Narsimha Reddy — from Hyderabad.
Of the nine other erstwhile districts, until now, there were no ministers from Ranga Reddy, Medak and Khammam districts. With the induction of Puvvada Ajay (Khammam), the district has now got a representation in the cabinet. Some districts like Ranga Reddy, Medak, Mahbubnagar, Hyderabad and Warangal have two ministers.
Sources said the chief minister took two new ministers from Karimnagar keeping future expansions in mind, and also social composition.
When it comes to social composition, as many as six ministers are from the Reddy community. They include Indrakaran Reddy, Sabitha Indra Reddy, Niranjan Reddy, G Jagadish Reddy, Ch Malla Reddy and Vemula Prashant Reddy. There are four ministers from Velama community, including KT Rama Rao, T Harish Rao and Erravelli Dayakar Rao and chief minister Chandrasekhar Rao.
From the backward castes (BC), four leaders — Eatala Rajender, Srinivas Yadav, V Srinivas Goud and Gangula Kamalakar — are now ministers. Only one minster each from scheduled caste (Koppula Eshwar), minority community (Mohammad Mahmood Ali), and Kamma community (Puvvada Ajay Kumar) are there in the KCR cabinet.
Since there has been no representation from schedule tribe (ST) in the cabinet in the second term, the chief minister inducted Satyavathi Rathod as minister after making her an MLC. In the previous TRS government, A Chandulal was minister from ST community from same Warangal district. But he lost in the 2018 assembly elections.
Interestingly, Satyavathi is the lone MLC who got a chance as minister, while the rest are MLAs. In the previous TRS government, Kadiyam Srihari and Nayani Narsimha Reddy served as ministers apart from Mohammad Mahmood Ali.
Sources said though KCR wants to take MLC Gutta Sukhender Reddy into the cabinet, due to social composition, especially many Reddy minsters, he decided to give him chance as legislative council chairman.