Revanth Reddy takes oath as Telangana CM, approves Cong's 6 poll guarantees

On Thursday, a decade after its inception, Telangana got its second chief minister (CM), Anumala Revanth Reddy, and its first Dalit deputy CM in Mallu Bhatti Vikaramarka.

In his first decision after taking the oath, the 54-year-old CM began the process of implementing the Congress’ six poll guarantees, and his second plan is to provide jobs to disabled women.

In the afternoon, Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan administered Reddy the oath of office in Hyderabad’s Lal Bahadur Shastri Stadium in a well-attended ceremony.

Vikaramarka, Congress legislative party leader in the 2018-23 Assembly, took the oath. So did 10 others as minister.

Vikarabad legislator Gaddam Prasad Kumar will be speaker of the new Assembly, the party said.

Senior Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Vadra, Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge, Karnataka and Himachal Pradesh CMs Siddaramaiah and Sukhvinder Singh, and Karnataka Deputy CM D K Shivkumar were present at the ceremony, as were representatives of INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance) bloc partners. The stadium was packed with party workers from across Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.

Congress leaders Ashok Gehlot and Bhupesh Baghel also attended.

Vikaramarka, Uttam Kumar Reddy, Venkat Reddy, and other senior party leaders such as Ponnam Prabhakar, D Sridhar Babu and Damodar Raja Narasimha -- senior leaders who were sulking -- find a place in the Cabinet, as do two women, Konda Surekha and Dansari Anasuya.

The Telangana Council of Ministers has three Reddys other than the CM. Ponnam Prabhakar and Konda Surekha are the Other Backward Classes (OBC) faces. Dansari Anasuya belongs to the Scheduled Tribes, and Damodar Raja Narasimha is from the Scheduled Castes. Sridhar Babu is Brahmin, Nageshwara Rao is the lone Kamma face, and Krishna Rao is from the Velama community.

The newly sworn-in ministerial council does not have any Muslim representation because none of the Muslims the Congress fielded won.

Muslims comprise 12 per cent of Telangana’s population.

As a symbol of fulfilling the promises in the Congress manifesto to make the government and the CM more accessible to the people, which, it had said, outgoing CM K Chandrasekhar Rao wasn’t, workers dismantled the iron barricades that guard the CM’s residence-cum-office.