When the chief minister of a state takes up a big exercise of reshuffling his cabinet after a long time, there is bound to be disgruntlement among the aspirants who cannot make it to the new cabinet and those who are dropped from the earlier cabinet.
So, there is no surprise that YSR Congress party president and chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy is also facing such hiccups in the party during the reshuffle of his council of ministers on Monday.
Jagan was obviously had to face a lot of pulls and pressures in revamping his cabinet; otherwise, he would not have retained as many as 11 ministers from the old cabinet, though initially he has indicated that he might retain four or five ministers.
Jagan had to retain seniors like Botsa Satyanarayana and Peddireddy Ramachandra Reddy, only because of their influence in their respective districts; and their reluctance to take up the party positions or cabinet rank posts offered by him.
But there are other seniors who could not be accommodated in the cabinet, like Balineni Srinivas Reddy. He is not only a relative of Jagan, but also a powerful force in Prakasam district. He is seething with anger for not being renominated, while others could get the chance.
Similarly, other party leaders like Samineni Udaya Bhanu, Kolusu Parthasarathy, Kotamreddy Sridhar Reddy, Pinnelli Ramakrishna Reddy and Mekathoti Sucharita have also raised their voice against the injustice meted out to them in the cabinet expansion.
Balineni is understood to have threatened to quit the MLA post, while Sucharita has already announced her resignation. The disgruntled elements stayed away from the cabinet formation on Monday.
However, senior YSRC leader and advisor to the government Sajjala Ramakrishna Reddy, who played a key role in the cabinet formation, said the dissatisfaction among the aspirants was quite common and it would be doused soon.
Sources in the party said Jagan would talk to each of the aspirants and the ministers who were dropped from the previous cabinet and pacify them. He might offer suitable positions to the prominent among them.
Fortunately, none of them so far said he or she would quit the party.
“Even if anybody does quit the party, there won’t be much impact on the party and Jagan knows how to handle such a situation,” a party senior said.
