For the second successive term, women MLAs do not find any place in the council of ministers of Telangana government. It continues to be an all-male cabinet in Telangana.
Telangana Rashtra Samithi president and chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, who expanded his two-member cabinet on Monday, did not bother about giving representation to at least one woman MLA.
Out of 119 assembly seats, KCR gave the party tickets to only six women, of which three MLAs won their seats.
Padma Devender Reddy, who was Deputy Speaker in the dissolved House, has been re-elected from Medak constituency.
TRS candidate for Khanapur Assembly constituency Rekha Naik a tribal and Gongidi Sunitha Reddy from Alair also retained their seats.
In the last cabinet between 2014 and 2018, too, KCR did not take even a single woman MLA into his cabinet.
It was expected that at least this time, the TRS chief would give representation to at least one of the three women MLAs, but he disappointed them once again.
Ironically, KCR’s daughter and Nizamabad MP Kalvakuntla Kavitha shouts from the rooftops about lack of adequate representation to women in the state and central legislatures and pitches for women’s reservation bill in Parliament. But she conveniently ignored the neglect of women by her own father in his government in Telangana.
As expected, KCR inducted 10 ministers in the cabinet which was expanded after a gap of 67 days of coming to power for a second successive term.
It was on December 13 that KCR was sworn in as the chief minister along with senior cabinet colleague Md Mahmud Ali and since then, the expansion has been hanging in balance.
Now, the strength of the cabinet has gone up to 12. The chief minister can induct another six ministers but he will do it only after Lok Sabha elections.
Governor of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh E S L Narasimhan administered the oath of office and secrecy to the new ministers at Raj Bhavan at 11.33 am.
While four ministers - Etela Rajender from Huzurabad, G Jagadeesh Reddy from Suryapet, Talasani Srinivas Yadav from Sanathnagar and Allola Indrakaran Reddy from Nirmal held the cabinet posts in the previous tenure, the remaining six - Singireddy Niranjan Reddy (Vanaparthi), Koppula Eswar (Dharmapuri), Errabelli Dayakar Rao (Palakurthi), Vemula Prasanth Reddy (Balkonda, V Srinivas Goud (Mahabubnagar) and Chamakura Malla Reddy (Medchal) were inducted into the cabinet for the first time.