NETA NATTER | Santhi Kumari takes aim at another glass ceiling

Telangana’s first woman Chief Secretary A. Santhi Kumari is reportedly setting her sights on yet another historic milestone. With her tenure as CS ending on April 30, the buzz in bureaucratic circles suggests that she is keen on becoming the first woman Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) of Telangana. Santhi Kumari took over as CS in January 2023 after a dramatic reshuffle and went on to become the third longest-serving top bureaucrat in the state’s history. Despite being appointed under the BRS regime, she retained her position after the Congress took over in December 2023. Now, with the CIC post lying vacant since September 2022, it is being heard in the Secretariat corridors that she has approached Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy for the role. If appointed, she would break yet another glass ceiling — no woman has ever held the CIC post, even in undivided Andhra Pradesh.

Survey bluster boomerangs on KCR family

Telangana Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy’s bold caste census move has BRS leaders squirming. When his government launched a door-to-door caste survey, top BRS figures K. Chandrashekar Rao, K.T. Rama Rao, and T. Harish Rao refused to participate, withholding their details from enumerators. Last week, Revanth presented the caste census report in the Legislative Assembly, triggering a backlash from KTR, who dismissed it as “bogus” due to 3.17 per cent of households being left out. Revanth fired back, exposing that the missing data included none other than KCR, KTR, and Harish themselves. In a strategic counter strike, he announced a fresh round of enumeration from February 16 to 28, pointedly inviting BRS leaders to cooperate. “If they truly care about accurate data, they should step up this time,” he quipped. With political temperatures rising, all eyes are now on whether BRS leaders will finally answer the door bell.

BRS attempt at ‘fake news’ flops

Will he come? Won’t he come? Or is he coming at all? That was the question doing the rounds recently when “news” began doing the rounds that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi decided on a sudden visit to Warangal. None in the Congress knew about it but as the news began doing the rounds, frantic party leaders were trying to figure out if this plan of Rahul was true. In the end, it did not turn out to be so, but BRS leaders, ever ready to take on the ruling party, began claiming that Rahul chose to cancel his trip because Warangal was where he made the ‘Rythu Declaration’ from and now that the Congress government has failed to keep its promises to farmers, he turned tail. There were never any plans of Rahul’s sudden unannounced visit Congress leaders retorted alleging that the whole “news” bit was a desperate BRS bid to first spread some fake news and then use it to diss the Congress.

KTR finds spicy post too hot to handle

Trigger-happy allegations aimed at political opponents sometimes have a way of getting back at those making them. Such was the case with the social media savvy K.T. Rama Rao, the BRS leader. KTR’s recent post castigating the Revanth Reddy government over a chilli-growing farmer pouring out his woes while standing in the Khammam agriculture market yard about the problems he was facing in selling his crop, turned out to be one from 2018, when KTR’s father K. Chandrashekar Rao was Chief Minister. With hot and spicy comebacks from the Congress on his post, and how that was all about KCR failing to take care of farmers as CM, KTR promptly deleted his post on X, it but the damage was done with folks pointing out that the post was yet another example of the BRS heaping baseless abuse on the Congress government.

Polls drive BRS leaders to temples

In God we trust. Or at least when elections are around the corner. That approach appears to have driven BRS leaders in Adilabad district to visit temples, mosques and churches, a Buddha vihar and village deities’ temples for which the then BRS government sanctioned development funds. Former minister Jogu Ramanna led the way, notching eight temple visits in a single day, as well as one to the Jama Masjid in Adilabad. On the face of it, the BRS claim is to counter the BJP claim that the latter is the “sole representative” of Hindus, and for good measure, threw in visits to mosques, churches and the like, and reminding people that it was their party that developed these places, and not the BJP.

MLC Mallanna raises brows, backs 2 ind. MLC candidates

Warangal-Khammam-Nalgonda Graduates MLC Chinthapandu Naveen, alias Teenmar Mallanna who has been in the news for all the wrong reasons for his party, the Congress, recently raised eyebrows by attending the nomination-filing of two candidates for Warangal-Khammam-Nalgonda Teachers’ MLC elections. But then, Mallanna was being himself is the buzz in his party for he did not offer his ‘BC’ support to many BC community candidates who filed nominations. He attended the rally in Nalgonda where independent candidate Poola Ravinder filed his nomination. He followed it up with being there for filing nomination by another independent candidate, Sangamreddy Sundar Raj Yadav. The question doing the rounds is whether the Congress MLC’s support to independents is aimed to dividing votes undermining the ones supported by his party.

Open and shut policy among IPS fraternity

My lips are sealed, in fact, all our lips are sealed has become the byword of sorts in the Anti-Corruption Bureau of late, especially when it comes to high-profile cases such as the Formula E race in which BRS leader K.T. Rama Rao is an accused. ACB Director-General Vijay Kumar, known as a down-to-earth officer in the IPS fraternity, has reportedly barred the media from getting information from investigating officers in headline-grabbing cases. Recently, the DG reportedly directed the IOs to steer clear of the media and not to disclose any information related to cases being investigated. Comparisons started flying fast and furious with his wife Shikha Goel, another senior IPS officer, who is DG of CID, Director of TG Cyber Security Bureau, and DG, Women Safety, who makes time for the media. It’s just the nature of the work they do; one can’t go public with info while the other needs to talk about issues of public safety she deals with each day.

Polls put the brakes on RTC strike

Talk about running into a saviour just in the nick of time. And that is precisely what some TGSRTC bosses are learnt to be grateful about. The RTC unions gave a strike call threatening to put the brakes on bus services from February 10 and the labour commissioner called for a meeting between both sides the next day. But just in the nick of time came the announcement about MLC elections and a model code of conduct, leaving the RTC management heaving a huge sigh of relief as it forced negotiations to a later date, along with the strike threat.

Roja in the middle as Gali brothers battle

R.K. Roja, the ever-fiery YSRC leader from AP, seems to have taken a not so well-timed break for a spiritual retreat — right when her political turf is under threat. Even as she has been doing the rounds of temples, perhaps seeking divine intervention, Gali Jagadish, younger son of late TD leader Gali Muddukrishnama Naidu, and the brother of TD’s Nagari MLA Gali Bhanu Prakash, is all set to enter the YSRC. Party chief Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy whose plans to keep Roja away from direct political contests is no secret, had even, in a rare display of courtesy, decided to inform Roja first of this move, but she was unavailable. What is now on the cards is an emerging battle between the Gali brothers, one in the TD and the Nagari MLA, and another set to join YSRC.

AP’s IT Minister Nara Lokesh Naidu sometimes cannot resist teching it out with his political opponents. Such was the case the other day when he couldn’t resist a quip about former chief minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, suggesting that someone who doesn’t even use a mobile phone would have a hard time implementing or responding through WhatsApp governance. Lokesh’s dig came while he was speaking about AP’s ‘WhatsApp governance’ initiatives and if this was not an idea borrowed from the former government led by Jagan. “If you don’t know how to use a mobile, how can you even dream about WhatsApp governance,” Lokesh said. This may or may not be so, but the general consensus is that the younger Naidu has now more or less mastered the art of one liners to hit out at opposition.

How hot is the TD’s Red Book?

Remember that “dreaded” Red Book of the TD that was for keeping tabs of all the wrongdoings of YSRC leaders so they can be punished at appropriate time? Apparently, the time has come to close it, if TD’s AP president Palla Srinivasa Rao’s words are anything to go by. Now that the YRSC has been drubbed in the polls, winning just 11 MLA seats against the 151 it had previously, there is no need for the Red Book now, Palla was heard saying the other day at an event in Gajuwaka.

Chiranjeevi tries to ride on JS success

Inheritance can come in several ways and for a political party, it could just be a matter of lineage, or may be metamorphosis. Such has turned out to be the case with Jana Sena at least as far as former Congress Rajya Sabha MP and movie actor Chiranjeevi is concerned. He recently reignited political discussions on who gets the credit for the Jana Sena, if it is its president and AP Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan or Chiranjeevi with the claims that the Praja Rajyam party he founded in 2008 is today’s Jana Sena. After initial success in the 2009 elections, winning 19 seats and marking Chiranjeevi’ְs debut from Tirupati, the party merged with the Congress in 2011 under undisclosed circumstances, and eventually was dissolved. After staying away from politics since then, Chiranjeevi recently declared his support to Jana Sena, hinting that over time it was the Praja Rajyam that morphed into its present avatar.

Contributions from Aruna, K.M.P. Patnaik, Laxmi Pranathi, Avinash P. Subramanyam, Mouli Mareedu, P. Srinivas, Pillalamarri Srinivas, L. Venkat Ram Reddy, Balu Pulipaka