Eighteen months after taking over as Telangana chief minister, A Revanth Reddy expanded his Cabinet by inducting three new ministers after finally getting the nod from the High Command. Three new ministers – Gaddam Vivek Venkataswamy, Vakiti Srihari, and Adhuri Laxman Kumar – were sworn in on Sunday by Governor Jishnu Dev Varma.

Reddy stuck to maintaining a social balance by including representatives of both Madiga and Mala communities of Scheduled Castes and Mudiraj community among Backward Classes. However, the Cabinet expansion has caused heartburns among several aspirants and AICC in-charge Meenakshi Natarajan and PCC president Mahesh Kumar Goud who had to rush in to smooth the ruffled feathers.

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Telangana will soon see a bypoll necessitated by the passing away of Jubilee Hills MLA Maganti Gopinath after a heart attack on Sunday. Gopinath, who belonged to BRS, had defeated Mohammad Azharuddin of the Congress with the help of the AIMIM.

Since Telangana was the first among the states to pass the legislation for the sub-categorization of Scheduled Castes after it was cleared by the Supreme Court, the choices for Cabinet expansion also reflected the same. The chief minister and the Congress High Command withstood the pressure from the powerful ‘Reddy’ community to which several ministers and Revanth Reddy belong.

While Gaddam Vivek belongs to the Mala community of SCs and Adhuri Laxman Kumar to the Madiga community, there will be equal representation in the Cabinet from both. Existing Cabinet members like Deputy Chief Minister Bhatti Vikramarka Mallu belong to the Mala community and Health Minister C Raja Narsimha hails from the Madiga community, which had fought for SC sub-categorization for a long time. Continuing with the social engineering concept of Congress, the chief minister also included Vakiti Srihari, who belongs to the largest group among backward classes – the Mudiraj. Ramchander Naik, party’s ST legislator was appointed as Deputy Speaker.

At 12:19 pm, Governor Jishnu Dev Varma administered the oaths of office and secrecy to the new ministers at Raj Bhavan in the presence of the chief minister, other senior leaders and officials. However, the occasion was marred by the disgruntlement of MLAs, including Sudarshan Reddy, Komatireddy Rajagopal Reddy and Prem Sagar Rao.

Once more, the Congress leadership chose to leave out a Muslim representative in the state Cabinet. Although none of the Muslim candidates won in the Assembly elections, the Congress could have incorporated them after ensuring their election as MLCs. Before expansion, there were six berths vacant in the state Cabinet and so three more ministers can be included in the future, leaving enough room for maneuvering for the state leadership.