Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy is likely to shuffle his cabinet in the next couple of weeks or couple of months. The defeat of the party in the MLC elections is said to be the reason for the chief minister to think of dropping some ministers and taking some new faces.
According to the sources, the chief minister’s officer had started making calls to the ministers asking them to meet the chief minister. These surprise calls have raised the BP levels of the ministers as they are likely to be dropped.
Minister for Animal Husbandry, Dr Seediri Appala Raju, who was in Vizianagaram district on Friday, was asked to come to the Tadepalli camp office of the chief minister. He had rushed back to cancelling all his programmes in the district.
Dr Appala Raju had volunteered to be out of the cabinet if the chief minister wanted to take some new faces. He said that he would work for the party whether he is there in the cabinet or not. This seems to have made Jagan Mohan Reddy’s task easy and hence he got the call, sources say.
The sources also indicate that Minister for Health Vidudala Rajani’s name is also doing rounds in the ruling party circles on the possibilities of showing her the door. The chief minister is said to be not happy with the minister and wants to have a new face in her place.
Sources also say that the chief minister is actively considering induction of former ministers Kodali Nani and Balineni Srinivasa Reddy into the cabinet. The chief minister wants these two in the cabinet as the party gears up for the 2024 general election.
The chief minister also wants to have a couple of new faces from among the MLCs, mostly the newly-elected MLCs. Marri Rajasekhar’s name tops the list of probable candidates to be inducted into the cabinet, if at all these are a reshuffle.
It is to be seen what decision that Jagan Mohan Reddy is set to take in the next two to three weeks.
