Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy is leaving for New Delhi on Saturday morning to get a sense of the Congress high command's expectations from his government and on the composition of his Council of Ministers.
“Almost all the Congress MLAs have called on me after I was sworn in which indicates their cordiality towards me”, said Mr. Reddy who has already done preliminary homework on the composition of his Cabinet during consultations with AICC general secretary Veerappa Moily on Thursday. To a question, he said the MLAs who met him include supporters of Congress MP Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy.
Speaking to The Hindu here on Friday, the Chief Minister did not seem to attach much political significance to Praja Rajyam president K. Chiranjeevi meeting him. As both of them were MLAs from Chittoor district, they met frequently and had lunch together. To persistent questions, he did not rule out the possibility of the Praja Rajyam extending outside support to his government.
Asked about the feedback he received for the agenda he had spelt out so far, Mr. Reddy said he had the advantage of occupying office without any “baggage” or by lobbying for the post. He said the Centre was prepared to go all out to extend unstinted support for the progress of Andhra Pradesh. In fact, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who called him on phone promised his full backing for the State's development irrespective of the outcome of Andhra-Telangana dispute.
The Chief Minister said it was a superfluous question whether he would carry on Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy's welfare programmes since he was part of an eight-member core group, including Ministers, which worked out finer details of innovative programmes like Arogyasri, health insurance scheme for the poor, refined them with the help of YSR's political adviser K.V. P. Ramachandra Rao before posing them to the then Chief Minister. He was the Government Chief Whip at that time.
In this context, he narrated his success story in getting a training centre of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) to the State, though the Centre had almost decided to establish it in Orissa. YSR had almost given up his efforts since the issue was posed to then Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil who quit the Cabinet after the 26/11 massacre in Mumbai. He (Mr. Kiran Kumar) took up the matter with Mr. Patil's successor, Mr. Chidambaram, though Orissa was unrelenting as it had offered 220 acres of land free of cost.
Mr. Reddy said his announcement on Thursday about transparent governance and firm action on the law & order front were not scripted in advance. He preferred not to talk too much now on policy issues, his priorities or his plans to curb corruption as he wanted to ensure that his actions would speak for themselves, he added.
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