Telangana Deputy CM Bhatti Vikramarka Mallu took charge of the office at the State Secretariat in Hyderabad on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Congress MLA Bhatti Vikramarka Mallu arrived at the State Secretariat amid the chanting of mantras by priests.
Earlier, Congress MLA Gaddam Prasad Kumar from Vikarabad filed a nomination for the post of Speaker of the Telangana Legislative Assembly on Wednesday.
Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy, Deputy Chief Minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka, Legislative Affairs Minister D Sridhar Babu, other Cabinet Ministers, former Minister and BRS Working President KTR, and other legislators were also present on the occasion.
After the recent election to the Assembly, AIMIM MLA Akbaruddin Owaisi was elected as the pro-tem Speaker of the House. He administered the oath of office to the newly elected MLAs on December 9. However, BJP MLAs refused to take oath from him, alleging that he was appointed, violating the rules.
The Congress won 64 seats in the recently concluded assembly polls and its ally CPI got one seat. BRS bagged 39 seats, BJP secured eight seats and AIMIM got seven seats.
Gaddam Prasad Kumar contested for the first time on a Congress ticket in the 2009 Assembly elections and won comfortably from the Vikarabad Assembly constituency.
In 2012, he was inducted into the Cabinet of N Kiran Kumar Reddy as Minister for Handlooms and Textiles in the undivided Andhra Pradesh. In 2014, after the state’s bifurcation, he lost to the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS, now Bharat Rashtra Samithi or BRS) candidate B Sanjeev Rao, and to M Anand in 2018.
Meanwhile on Thursday, Chief Minister Revanth Reddy conducted a detailed review on the Hyderabad Metro Rail Project, its expansion plans and the Airport Metro Project. The CM stated that, since a major part of the city’s population is in central and eastern parts and in the Old City, priority should have been given to take the Airport Metro alignment through Old City from MGBS – Falaknuma; and from LB Nagar area to serve a vast majority of the common people.
CM Sri Revanth Reddy also emphasized that the city should be developed and expanded equally in all directions and that Hyderabad has tremendous potential to be a global city with no geographical limitations. Keeping the fact that Telangana is already at 40% urbanisation and is further rapidly getting urbanized, Hyderabad city should be planned for accommodating initially about two crore population and finally around three crore population, by creating satellite townships all around ORR and Metro Rail shall play an important role in providing affordable and fast connectivity to these satellite townships
