In what appears to be a move to tone up the administration, chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy on Monday relieved 11 ministers from the responsibility of being in-charge ministers of other districts and brought in first-time ministers, including Kondru Murali, DK Aruna and S Sailajanath, to take their place.
Four senior ministers Botcha Satyanarayana (transport), Anam Ramnarayana Reddy (finance), N Raghuveera Reddy (revenue) and Vatti Vasanatha Kumar (tourism) opted out of responsibility voluntarily while others were stripped of the duties due to their lack of interest.
It was said that Vatti Vasanta Kumar and Galla Aruna (mines) were busy with the World Telugu Conference to be held Tirupati and therefore would have little time to concentrate on other districts.
The reasons given for Satrucharla Vijararamaraju (forest) and Danam Nagender (labour) were that the former would have to oversee arrangements for the upcoming biodiversity conference in Hyderabad and the latter cannot spare time as he is also the president of Greater Hyderabad Congress Committee.
Apart from deputy chief minister Damodar Rajanarasimha, senior ministers like Panchayat Raj minister K Jana Reddy, major irrigation minister Sudarshan Reddy and rural development minister D Manikya Varaprasad were also freed from their district responsibilities.
Sources said Galla Aruna and Manikya Varaprasad were unhappy over being relieved of the additional responsibilities.
However, it is learnt that this reshuffle was based on the recommendations of the Dharmana Prasada Rao-led ministerial committee.
The committee had suggested that the chief minister must replace ministers who were discharging their duties as district incharge improperly and use youngsters who could spare more time and energy, with youngsters who could spare more time and energy to strengthen the party at the grassroots. For instance, Rajanarasimha, Jana Reddy and Danam Nagender were relieved from their district post as they were said to be reluctant to hold review meetings.
Kiran Kumar also seems to have done a lot of thinking before choosing new ministers to be district incharges.
In troublesome districts which have internal squabbles among party leaders, he put the responsibility on those ministers who belong to faraway districts so as to reduce the chances of them taking sides in the arguments.
For instance, he appointed home minister P Sabita Indra Reddy as the incharge for East Godavari, Erasu Prathap Reddy for Srikakualm, Kanna Lakshminarayana for West Godavari, S Sailajanath for Prakasam district and Kondru Murali for Kurnool district.
Of the two ministers from the Chiranjeevi camp, only Ganta Srinivasa Rao was given district incharge post whereas C Ramachandraiah was left free.