High command intervenes to defuse AP berth drama

All ministers, except Vatti Vasant Kumar, attended the cabinet meeting on Thursday. Kumar had earlier tendered his resignation expressing dissatisfaction over the allocation of Tourism Ministry to him.

With the decision on appointing a deputy chief minister from the Telangana region yet to be taken, Thursday’s cabinet meeting assumed greater significance and the party high command had taken greater care to stop the issue from blowing out into a crisis.

After the cabinet meeting, Information Minister D K Aruna told the media that the issue did not come up during the meeting. “Except Vasant Kumar, all others participated in the cabinet meeting,” she said.

The issue first broke out on Wednesday night when the chief minister’s office released the list of ministerial allocations, in which senior figures of the party were relegated to insignificant positions. New-comers like Y S Vivekananda Reddy, who was given agriculture, were given important positions.

The high command intervened to sort out the situation soon after 10 of the ministers converged on the bungalow of one of their colleagues to discuss their resignations. Sonia Gandhi’s political adviser Ahmed Patel spoke to the chief minister and to those in the dissident camp to end the crisis.