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Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhara Rao is expanding his cabinet on Tuesday after taking steps to avert any major political problems from those who will not make it.
The chief minister is at liberty to induct a maximum of six new ministers if he desires to continue all of the 11 existing ministers, as the government can appoint only 15 per cent (or 18 members) of the 120-strong legislative Assembly.
KCR today discussed with senior party leaders on finalising the names of the new ministers. He also visited senior leader K Keshava Rao's house for this purpose. Though the ruling TRS party had formed the government after barely crossing the half-way mark in the Assembly, KCR later succeeded in improving the support base with close to a dozen MLAs from other parties switching their loyalties in favour of the government.
Unusual in some ways, the chief minister had made it known to at least six legislators well in advance that they were not going to get Cabinet berths. The chief minister's office mentioned their names against other government positions such as chief whip, whips and parliamentary secretaries. It had also hinted that another half a dozen legislators would be appointed as chairmen of government corporations.
However, there were reports of protests by the followers of Dharmapuri constituency (in Karimnagar) holder Koppula Eshwar, as his name was mentioned for the chief whip post, ignoring his claim for a Cabinet berth.
Names of six-seven MLAs have been doing the rounds as possible new inductees though it's not yet clear if the chief minister would choose to fill all the six berths or leave a couple of them for a possible second expansion.
The chief minister had allocated multiple portfolios to some of the ministers besides keeping a host of them with himself as the size of the Cabinet had to be less than half than that of the undivided AP. The same situation prevailed at the officers level as the Centre was yet to complete the process of allocation of the All India services officers between the two states. A situation of a single officer handling multiple departments had further affected the the process of decision making and the execution in government.
While the chief minister is expected to change the situation partly by inducting new ministers and re-allocating the existing portfolios, he also has to take political exigencies into consideration while filling the cabinet berths. Also, two of the ten districts, Khammam and Mahabubnagar, did not find representation in the cabinet formation six months ago.
