With the marriage season on, Secretariat, the seat of state administration, wore a deserted look on Wednesday, with employees and ministers, including chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy, keeping away to attend weddings. Visitors to the Secretariat too were very few.
More than two lakh weddings are expected to be performed across the state from Wednesday to Friday. Of them around 50,000 are in Hyderabad alone. The chief minister himself attended two marriages in Madhapur on Wednesday. Ministers, MLAs and several Secretariat employees too headed for various marriage halls.
Though Wednesday was a working day, the usual activity at the Secretariat was missing. The chief minister stayed at his camp office, where three ministers called on him. In the evening, he left the camp office to be present at marriage functions at Madhapur.
The only minister who visited the Secretariat on Wednesday was medical education minister Kondru Murali. Asked for his comments by the electronic media, he took potshots at opposition leader N Chandrababu Naidu. After that, he too left the Secretariat.