Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy will expand his Cabinet again by inducting three Ministers on Monday evening. The new Ministers will be administered the oath of office and secrecy by Governor E. S. L. Narasimhan at a swearing-in ceremony at 6.28 p.m. at the Raj Bhavan.
This will be the second expansion of the Cabinet undertaken by Mr. Kiran Kumar Reddy in less than three weeks. He had included two legislators of the erstwhile Praja Rajyam - C. Ramachandraiah and Mr. G. Srinivasa Rao - into his Council of Ministers on January 19.
Their inclusion was in fulfilment of the Congress party's promise to filmstar-turned-politician K. Chiranjeevi to accommodate his partymen in return for the latter's support to the government during the confidence vote last year.
Official sources said that the MLAs to be sworn-in today are Mr. N. Uttam Kumar Reddy (Huzurnagar), Mr. Kondru Murali (Rajam), and Mr. Prasad Kumar (Vikarabad). Mr. Murali's inclusion in the last minute came as a surprise as the Cabinet reshuffle was expected to be confined largely to Telangana region, where Ministers K. Venkat Reddy and J. Krishna Rao quit while another Minister P. Shankar Rao was dismissed recently.
They said that Mr. Kiran Kumar Reddy was unlikely to reshuffle the Ministers' portfolios as the budget session of the Assembly is scheduled to begin next week. The Chief Minister had pressed his party high command for permission to thoroughly overhaul his Cabinet during his two-day visit to New Delhi on February 4 and 5.
The AICC leadership, however, gave him the mandate for a limited expansion, lest the exercise leads to dissension in the Congress ahead of Assembly by-elections in the State.
