Even as suspense continues over the allocation of portfolios to the newly inducted cabinet ministers, the AICC has appointed a new set of Vice Presidents and Secretaries for Telangana.
After much delay, Congress had cleared the names of three MLAs for cabinet expansion. The legislators who were later sworn in at Raj Bhavan are A Laxman Kumar, G Vinod and V Srihari.
Vinod belongs to the Mala sub-caste in SC. Laxman Kumar’s selection is an interesting aspect of the cabinet expansion. The first-time MLA has been a party loyalist all along serving different positions with the organisation starting from student days. What also worked in his favour was his sub-caste, Madiga. Though the community has the largest composition within SC’s in Telangana, there has only been one minister in the 12-member cabinet of the Congress government.
Prior to the cabinet expansion, the group of Madiga legislators wrote to the high command to consider their request to include one of them as minister as there were already two Mala leaders in key positions, deputy CM Bhatti Vikramarka and Speaker G Prasad.
With the name of one more Mala leader G Vivek started doing the rounds, the group intensified their demand, meeting CM A Revanth Reddy in the process.
A section of high command backed their cause and Laxman Kumar was given a cabinet berth. The third minister, V Srihari belongs to BC and is from the Mudiraj community, a politically emerging grouping within BC.
The surprise element was the absence of any leader from the Reddy community, which is seen as the backbone of the Congress party and political influence. Even though there were some names doing the rounds like K Rajagopal Reddy and Sudarshan Reddy, they did not make it to the list.
Telangana CM Revanth Reddy is in Delhi, meeting the senior leaders of the party and the outcome could give clarity on portfolios.
Meanwhile, the Congress announced 27 new Vice-Presidents and 69 General Secretaries. Among them, 8 belong to BC, 5 to SC, 2 are from ST and 3 are Muslims. Among General Secretaries, this figure is 47 (SC, ST, BC and Muslims) out of 69.
