Etela in the race for Telangana Assembly speaker

Hyderabad: As TRS chief K Chandrasekhar Rao was sworn-in as chief minister on Thursday, along with Md Mahmood Ali, who was the deputy chief minister in the previous government, speculations are rife about the composition of the new Cabinet.The grapevine has it that in all probability, former finance minister Etela Rajender, who belongs to Backward Classes, may be made Speaker of the House.

It is also widely believed that youngsters like Balka Suman, a first-time MLA,  Arekapudi Gandhi or Puvvada Ajay Kumar may be inducted into the Cabinet, while seniors like Nayani Narasimha Reddy and Kadiyam Srihari may not find place in the Cabinet.   

Similarly, the State Legislative Council will have a new chief soon. The term of the present chairman of the Council K Swami Goud would end next  March. According to sources, Rao is planning to make former Speaker KR Suresh Reddy, who joined the TRS before the Assembly elections, as chairman of the Council.

Emboldened by their party’s massive victory in the just-concluded Assembly elections, the TRS MPs are set to take an aggressive stand against the BJP government in the ongoing Parliament session. 

The pink party’s MPs, who will be armed with ‘52 arrows in their quiver’, are planning to corner and attack PM Narendra Modi’s government, demanding it to immediately resolve pending issues related to Telangana.

TRS Parliamentary Party (TRSPP) meet here under the chairmanship of party president K Chandrasekhar Rao and discussed about the State’s issues and the role of the TRS in national politics. 

Later speaking to reporters, MP AP Jitender Reddy said that they have identified 52 issues relating to the State while revealing their plan to raise those issues in the Parliament.

He said that though KCR himself met Modi several times in the past, there had been no response from the Centre in the last four and half years.“The Centre did not implement the pending issues of AP Reorganisation Act, 2014. Though, High Court is created for Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand States within 15 days of the creation of those states, High Court has not been bifurcated for Telangana in the last four years,” Jitender Reddy alleged.

Reddy also alleged that there was no positive response from the Central government to TRS’ demand to link the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) with agriculture sector.