A decade after he had lost power, Teugu Desam Party supremo N Chandrababu Naidu on Sunday assumed office as the Chief Minister of residuary State of Andhra Pradesh.
State Governor ESl Narasimhan administered him the oath of office and secrecy before a sea of humanity in Guntur at 7.27 pm, the auspicious time fixed by pundits. Nineteen other Ministers including two from the BJP also took oath along with Naidu at a specially-built venue opposite Nagarjuna University.
It is record third time that 64-year-old Naidu took oath as the Chief Minister. Earlier, he had become the Chief Minister of undivided Andhra Pradesh in 1995 and 1999 ruling the State for nine years. But this time a truncated Andhra Pradesh, after carving out of Telangana, will be under Naidu’s rule.
More than 30,000 workers and supporter of the TDP attended the colorful extravaganza. Vijayawada-Guntur Highway was clogged with vehicles and people from all over coastal Andhra came to the venue through all modes of transport turning Guntur into a yellow sea.
While Prime Minister Narendra Modi sent congratulatory message over Twitter expressing his good wishes to Naidu and assuring all the help to the people of Andhra Pradesh, Chief Ministers of five States and several Union Ministers attended the ceremony.
Naidu Cabinet includes six new faces while rest are seniors who earlier had worked with Naidu as Ministers. Except Kadapa, all the 12 districts of Seemandhra are given representation in the Cabinet.
No Muslim or tribal leader could find a place in Naidu’s team. However, there are three Reddys and same number of women in the Cabinet.
KE Krishnamurthy, a backward class leader and N Chinna Rajappa from Kapu community are made the Deputy Chief Ministers. It is for the first time that Naidu has Deputy Chief Ministers in his team.
Senior members of the Cabinet include Y Ramakri-shnudu, Bojjala Gopalakrishna Reddy, Devineni Umamahes-hwara Rao, Ch Ayyannapatrudu, Ganta Srinivas Rao.
Paritala Sunita, whose husband and former Minister Paritala Ravindra was killed by political rivals in 2005, also found a place in the Cabinet. Ministers from the BJP include Manikyala Rao and Kamineni Srinivas.
After swearing-in, Naidu’s first signature as the Chief Minister was on three files. While the first file was related to waiver of farmer’s loan, the other two files were regarding the closure of belt shops or unauthorised liquor shops in rural areas and the NTR Sujala Sravanti project.
Union Ministers who attended the ceremony include Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Nirmala Sitharaman, Ananth Kumar, Prakash Javadekar, M Venkaiah Naidu of the BJP and P Ashok Gajapati Raju of the TDP. lK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi were among the senior BJP leaders who attended the ceremony. Adani and Rajnath Singh came in a special flight.
Chief Ministers Parkash Singh Badal (Punjab) along with his son Sukhbir Singh Badal, Vasundhara Raje (Rajasthan), Anandiben Patel (Gujarat), Manohar Parrikar (Goa) and Nagaland Chief Minister TR Zeliang also made their presence felt.
Other prominent guests at the swearing-in ceremony include Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh, Union Ministers Piyush Goel, Kalraj Mishra, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray, MDMK leader Vaiko, Rajya Sabha vice-chairman and Congress leader PJ Kurien, Indian National lok Dal leader Abhay Chautala, Akali Dal leader Naresh Gujral, spiritual leader Sri Sri Ravishankar and film star Vivek Oberoi.
The VIPs were brought from Vijayawada to Guntur in special buses and fleets of cars. Tamil Nadu was represented by two Cabinet Ministers. Three special flights were arranged from Hyderabad to Gannavaram Airport at Vijayawada in view of the huge rush including a large number of VIPs.
Film star N Balakrishna, (TDP MlA), his brothers N Harikrishna and Jaya Krishna along with other family members came to the venue together. NTR Junior was also present. Pawan Kalyan, a star campaigner for the TDP-BJP alliance was also cynosure of all eyes.
Naidu, who reached Guntur in the afternoon after paying tributes at samadhi of TDP founder NT Rama Rao, was accompanied by wife Bhuvaneswari and daughter-in law. His son N lokesh was present in Guntur since Saturday.
Elaborate security arrangements were made in and around Guntur and Vijayawada in view of the presence of such a large number of VIPs as well as massive gathering of people.