Senior YSR Congress party leader and MLA Gadikota Srikanth Reddy, who is a hard core loyalist of party president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S jaganmohan Reddy, has been appointed as chief whip of the Andhra Pradesh government in the assembly.
Srikanth Reddy was one of the MLAs whose name was in circulation for a long time for the cabinet berth. However, Jagan could not accommodate him due to caste and regional equations.
So, he chose Srikanth Reddy for the chief whip post, which is of cabinet rank and has all the protocol privileges of a minister.
In fact, there was a talk on Saturday morning that Jagan is considering the name of actress-cum-firebrand MLA from Nagari R K Roja for the chief whip post.
May be he has decided against choosing her because of her loose tongue which might bring disrepute to the party.
Apart from Srikanth Reddy, Jagan also appointed MLAs - Chevireddy Bhaskar Reddy, Muthyala Naidu, Dadishetty Raja, Parthasarathy and Korumutla Srinivas as the party whips in the assembly. All of them expected berths in the Jagan cabinet but were not successful.
All of them would take oath in the presence of Governor E S L Narasimhan, party sources said.