Amaravati, June 12
Andhra Pradesh got its new Chief Minister today as TDP leader N Chandrababu Naidu took oath of office while his ally Jana Sena party’s leader Pawan Kalyan was sworn-in as the Deputy Chief Minister. Apart from Naidu and Kalyan, 23 more ministers took oath including three from the Jana Sena and one from the BJP.
Top leaders who attended the event include Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Ministers Amit Shah, JP Nadda, Nitin Gadkari, Ramdas Athawale, Anupriya Patel and Chirag Paswan; Maharashtra CM Eknath Shinde, NCP leader Praful Patel and former vice-president M Venkaiah Naidu. Governor S. Abdul Nazeer administered the oath of office and secrecy to 74-year-old Chandrababu Naidu.
The Governor administered the oath to Naidu and his Council of Ministers at a public ceremony held at Kesarapalli IT Park near Gannavaram Airport, Vijayawada.
Earlier, Chandrababu Naidu has submitted the list of ministers to Governor S. Abdul Nazeer.
The Council of Ministers includes his son and TDP General Secretary Nara Lokesh, TDP’s Andhra Pradesh unit president K. Atchannaidu, and Jana Sena Party political affairs committee chairman Nadendla Manohar. The lone BJP MLA in the cabinet is Satya Kumar Yadav. The Jana Sena party inductees into the cabinet are Pawan Kalyan, Nadendla Manohar and Kandula Durgesh. While there is still one vacancy as the maximum strength is 26 including the Chief Minister, the council has three women ministers. The only Muslim face in the cabinet is N. Mohammed Farook. If the caste combination of the new ministry is looked at, it includes eight from Backward Classes, three from Scheduled Castes, and one from Scheduled Tribes. There are four ministers each from the Kamma and Kapu communities, three from Reddy and one from Vysya communities. The TDP-BJP-Jana Sena alliance had swept the Andhra Pradesh election by winning 164 seats out of the total 175.
