Portfolio reshuffle: AP min hurt after being divested of depts

Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh Health Minister D L Ravindra Reddy on Wednesday expressed anger and hurt over the manner in which he was divested of some health-related departments in the recent reshuffle of portfolios carried out by Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy.

"I am not unhappy over the portfolio. I have no intention to quit my post due to so-called dissatisfaction over the portfolio. But, the way in which I am divested of the portfolios, it hurts me," Reddy told reporters here on Wednesday.

Taking exception to a media release from the Chief Minister's Office which stated that the changes were made for administrative convenience, Reddy wondered why all the health-related departments were clubbed earlier and divided now.

"What administrative convenience prompted the merger of the (health-related) departments earlier? What administrative convenience prompted them to be divided now? This question has no answer," he said.

The Cabinet of Kiran Kumar Reddy was expanded by induction of three MLAs on Monday last, after which the portfolios of some ministers were changed.

Though Ravindra Reddy expressed his desire to quit in protest against the developments, he refrained from doing so after speaking to senior Congress leaders like Ghulam Nabi Azad, incharge of party affairs in the state, sources said.

He had a meeting with state Congress president Botsa Satyanarayana who asked him to work in the interests of party.

"I told all Congress elders that I will be loyal to the party and that I will not tolerate those who attack the party," he said.

In an apparent attack on the Chief Minister, Ravindra Reddy asked why "those in superior positions" kept silent when Kadapa MP Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy attacked Congress. (More)