After a lot of brainstorming on how to deal with the vacant portfolio in Telangana, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi(TRS) leadership had finally zeroed on a leader to fill the portfolio. The ruling party had allotted the portfolio to troubleshoot Harish Rao who is currently holding the Finance Ministry portfolio.
Telangana Medical and Health portfolio that has been lying vacant after former Cabinet Minister Etela Rajender resigned from his position was now allotted to Harish Rao. With this, Harish Rao will take care of two portfolios from now on. After Etela’s infamous row, CM KCR has been taking care of the health Ministry.
The new appointment adds one more responsibility on Harish Rao’s shoulders. Recently, he was made the in-charge of Huzurabad by-elections. However, TRS lost the sitting position with a big margin of more than 23,000 votes. BJP candidate Etela Rajender defeated TRS candidate Gellu Srinivas.
Experts are seeing Harish’a new responsibility as an example of how much faith Telangana Chief Minister Kalvakuntla Chandrashekhar Rao has in his nephew. Despite losing the by-poll, KCR went to his troubleshooter to get his job done.
Earlier reports on Harish Rao taking the health portfolio had started after he was spotted in various review meetings chaired by the Chief Minister. Harish Rao accompanying KCR during the hospital visit also added fuel to the reports.
Tracing the events that resulted in the health portfolio being vacant, the Telangana government led by CM KCR had removed Etela Rajender from his cabinet position, the health Ministry after allegations were leveled against him on alleged land grabbing issue on the 1st of May this year.
A day after stripping the portfolio from Etela Rajender, KCR took over the portfolio and has been overseeing things in the portfolio ever since. Etela Rajender who was not happy with this had left the party by resigning from the MLA post. He joined the BJP and contested the by-poll on the BJP ticket.
Etela’s resignation from the Huzurabad constituency called for a by-election in the constituency. The tough fight between BJP and TRS had ended in favor of BJP. For the fifth consecutive time, Etela Rajender won as the MLA from the constituency.
