With two Bharatiya Janata Party ministers in the Telugu Desam Party government in Andhra Pradesh resigning from their posts on Thursday following the straining of relations between the two parties, speculations began in political circles as to who would replace them in the cabinet.
According to highly placed sources in the TDP, soon after the resignations of Kamineni Srinivas and P Manikyala Rao were accepted, party president and chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu indicated that he might to have to fill up the vacancies at the earliest.
Sources said two names that are doing rounds in the party circles as replacements to the two BJP ministers are that of Vijayawada (West) MLA Mohammad Jaleel Khan and former Congress minister Anam Ramnarayana Reddy.
While Jaleel Khan’s name is being considered to woo the minorities who had otherwise drifted from the TDP after it joined hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2014, the induction of Ramnarayana Reddy is to appease the Anam family which has been disgruntled after joining the TDP in 2016. The TDP badly needs the support of Anam family to retain hold in Nellore district.
Jaleel Khan, who got into headlines for wrong reasons with his B Com (physics) qualification, was elected on YSRC ticket but jumped into the TDP later. If he joins the TDP cabinet, he would be the fifth defected MLA to become a minister, the other four being Amarnath Reddy, Adinarayana Reddy, Sujaya Krishna Ranga Rao and Bhuma Akhila Priya.
Anam, however, is not an MLA and had lost his deposit in 2014 assembly elections from Atmakur like any other Congress candidate. If he is taken into the cabinet, he has to become an MLC within six months. It remains to be seen under what quota he would get elected to the council.
