Govt reconstitutes GoM on Telangana; drops Raju, brings Antony

Barely two days after constituting a ten-member GoM on Telangana, government today reorganised the high-powered ministerial panel by dropping HRD Minister M Pallam Raju and bringing Defence Minister A K Antony, and also reducing the number of members to seven.

Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde, Defence Minister A K Antony, Finance Minister P Chidambaram, Minister of Health and Family Welfare Ghulam Nabi Azad, Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas M Veerappa Moily and Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh are the members of the reconstituted GoM.

Minister of State for Personnel and Prime Minister's Office V Narayanasamy will be the Special Invitee in the reconstituted Group of Ministers which will look into the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh and formation of Telangana.

Apart from Antony, the Union Ministers who were newly inducted in the GoM are Azad, Moily and Ramesh.

The Union Ministers dropped from the GoM are Law Minister Kapil Sibal, Water Resources Minister Harish Rawat, Urban Development Minister Kamal Nath, Road Transport Minister Oscar Fernandes, Power Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia and Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia besides Raju.

Raju hails from Seemandhra region of Andhra Pradesh and is opposed to creation of Telangana. He has submitted his resignation letter to Prime Minister as mark of protest and did not attend the Cabinet meeting yesterday.

After the October 3 meeting of the Union Cabinet, which approved the creation of Telangana, government had announced that the GoM on Telangana will have ten Union Ministers as its members.