In a highly-anticipated move, Pawan Kalyan, the chief of the JanaSena Party, was named the Deputy Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh by the Chandrababu Naidu-led government on Friday. The actor-turned-politician has been allocated the portfolios of Panchayat Raj and Rural Development, Environment, Forests, and Science and Technology.
Nara Lokesh, Naidu’s son, was given the portfolios of Human Resources Development, Information Technology, and Communication. Lokesh, who is 41, is a Stanford MBA graduate and a former World Bank official. He previously served as a minister and won the Mangalagiri seat with a margin of 91,413 votes.
Anitha Vangalapudi has been appointed as the Home Minister, while Naidu will retain the Law and Order portfolio. Alongside Naidu, 24 ministers were sworn in on Wednesday. Among them, 17 are first-time ministers, three are women, eight belong to backward class (BC) communities, one is a Muslim, two are from Scheduled Castes (SC), and one is from Scheduled Tribes.
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The new cabinet includes 20 ministers from the TDP, three from JanaSena, and one from BJP. P Narayana has been allotted the crucial Municipal Administration department, which will oversee the development of the Amaravati capital region. The foundation stone for the Amaravati project was laid in 2015, but it stalled due to a political power shift when the YSRCP formed the state government after the 2019 assembly elections.
In the recent Andhra Pradesh assembly elections, the TDP-JanaSena-BJP alliance achieved a sweeping victory, winning 164 out of the 175 seats. Kalyan’s party won 21 seats in the assembly elections and two in the concurrent Lok Sabha polls, achieving a 100 percent strike rate. The alliance secured 21 out of the 25 Lok Sabha seats in Andhra Pradesh.
Earlier on Friday, Pawan Kalyan’s X handle shared a post referring to him as the deputy chief minister.
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