It looks like YSR Congress party president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy has decided to grant extension to all his advisors one after the other for a second term.
The latest advisor to get the extension is senior journalist Devulapalli Amar, advisor to the state government on national media and inter-state affairs.
His tenure came to an end on September 2 and the chief minister is learnt to have issued directions to extend his term by another one year.
Amar took charge as the advisor to the government on September 3, though there was a criticism against Jagan as to how he could appoint a hard core Telangana activist as an advisor to the Andhra Pradesh government.
He was given a cabinet rank with all perks and was allowed to have offices in Hyderabad and Delhi as well.
Amar was expected to coordinate with the national media and disseminate information about the Jagan government’s work, particularly the welfare programmes, across the nation, but there were hardly any instances of him interacting with the national media.
Amar got into the good books of Jagan as he had been associated with Sakshi TV, owned by Jagan.
Being a journalist union leader, it was expected that Amar would address the issues concerning the journalists with the Jagan government, but the Andhra journalists are said to be unhappy with him.
In June, Jagan gave extension to four of his key advisors - Talasila Raghuram, Sajjala Ramakrishna Reddy, Ajeya Kallam and G V D Krishna Mohan – by one more year, for their “good work’ in the posts.
There are at least around 30 advisors to the chief minister, drawn from various fields and each of them was given the cabinet rank with salary and perks amounting to nearly Rs 4 lakh per month, besides all the paraphernalia.
Many of them played a key role in the YSRC for several years and helped the party win the elections in various ways.
There were some others whose services were required for the state because of their expertise in their respective fields.
